The Demonists

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  “And yours?” John asked.

  The demon shook his wife’s head from side to side. “Not gonna get that from me,” it said. “Names are power . . . but you already know that, John.”

  “I’m getting tired of you,” John said. “I have some questions that you’re going to answer.”

  “Ya think?” the demon responded.

  Suddenly the demon’s body was racked with what could best be described as a horrible spasm. It looked quite painful.

  “You’ll answer the questions or I’ll hurt you.” Theo’s voice suddenly came through, replacing that of the demon’s.

  “Fucking bitch,” it snarled.

  “I wouldn’t test her,” John said. “She means what she says.”

  The demon seemed to consider this.

  “Ask him the questions, John,” Elijah said from the monitor speakers.

  The demon looked up from the floor to the computer. “I love this fucking show,” it murmured. “I thought it was canceled.”

  “Are you ready?” John asked it, bringing its attention back to him.

  “Sure,” the demon said. “What have I got to lose?”

  John found the tooth and held it out to his wife.

  “This,” John said.

  “The tooth fairy is gonna give you at least five bucks for that beauty,” the demon said, and then chuckled again.

  “You know what it is.”

  “A small fortune,” the demon said, just before his—her—face twisted up in pain, and the monster let out a pathetic squeak.

  “Tell us,” his wife’s voice commanded. John was amazed at what she was doing, controlling this twisted abomination from within her own body, but he worried about her endurance. How long could she keep this one monstrosity under control, while keeping watch—and control—over so many others?

  “The marks on the tooth,” John said, holding it up to the demon so that he could see. “It’s writing, isn’t it?”

  “It’s writing all right,” the demon agreed.

  “What does it say?”

  The demon held its tongue.

  “Do you want her to hurt you some more?” John asked. “I could most definitely ask her to do that for me. We have a bit of an agreement.”

  “Fuckers,” it snarled.

  “Occasionally,” John agreed with a nod. “Actually, quite a bit.” It was John’s turn to smile. “What does it say?” he then asked, the smile quickly disappearing.

  The demon simmered, its horrible eyes attempting to inflict some sort of terrible damage with the intensity of its stare.

  “Theo,” John said. “Hurt him really bad this time.”

  The demon’s eyes went suddenly wide, and it began to talk.

  “It’s a declaration . . . ,” the demon cried out.

  “A declaration,” Elijah repeated. “What kind of declaration?”

  “A declaration of return,” the demon said, his breathing becoming rapid. “He wants everybody to know that he’s coming back.”

  “Who?” John asked. “Who’s coming back?”

  The demon didn’t want to say, but Theo convinced him that he should. The demon fell sideways to the floor, writhing as if he’d been doused in acid. John hated to see his wife’s body used in such a way, but he needed to be strong as she was being.

  They needed to get their answers.

  “Damakus,” the demon said pitifully. She had done a job on him this last time.

  “I’m not familiar,” John said. “Demon?”

  “A lord,” the demon said. “A king.”

  “Mustn’t have been anything too special,” John said. “Never heard of him.”

  The demon chuckled. “Which was all part of their plan.”

  John waited. The demon knew that it had to explain everything that it said or Theo would— “The other lords at the time feared him . . . feared his growing might,” the demon explained, not wanting to be hurt anymore. “So they tried to erase him . . . anything and everything that knew his name was excised—wiped from the world.”

  “And that would hurt him?”

  The demon looked disgusted by John’s stupidity.

  “It’s how he fed . . . how he grew strong,” the demon told him. “To know of Damakus was to fear him . . . that fear gave him form . . . strength . . . power.”

  “So to eliminate any mention of Damakus was to take away his might.”

  “He ceased to be,” the demon said. “Or at least the lords and kings thought.”

  “This message,” John said, presenting the tooth again. “And the message written on the other teeth . . .”

  “There’s more?” the demon asked, springing up from the floor. “Can I see them? How about if I said please?” The demon smiled horribly, a thick stream of something foul smelling running over Theo’s bottom lip to the floor.

  “Even though we can’t read it,” John said. “This message calls him back?”

  “It’s the language of Damakus, fool,” the demon said. “Just to see it is to remember him . . . to call him back from the brink of the void.”

  “Someone is trying to call him back?” John said, realizing what this was all meant.

  “Oh yes,” the demon responded excitedly. “And once he’s back . . . once they know of him, and see his glory . . .”

  The demon paused, making sure that his words were sinking in. “No one will ever forget him again, and his power will grow and grow and he will live as lord over this festering pile-of-shit world forever.”

  John stared at the demon wearing the guise of his wife and felt his anger surge. He’d had just about enough this.

  “We’re done,” he said, hoping that his wife could hear.

  “Don’t you want to know more?” the demon asked. “I’m sure there’s all kinds of shit that you don’t know . . . about how bad it’s going to get around here. Damakus is only the first of your concerns.”

  What the demon said was tempting, but one problem at a time, John thought. They would hopefully be able to deal with Damakus, and then . . .

  The demon began to squeal like a pig being dragged to the slaughterhouse, and John watched helplessly as his wife’s body writhed upon the floor of his office before going suddenly still.

  The sigils were flowing wildly but then began to slow, and he waited to see if she was all right.

  Theo’s eyes flickered open, and she let out a low, tormented moan. He could only imagine how it must have felt to have something like that within her body, never mind a thousand.

  “I need to brush my teeth,” she said, her face twisted up in disgust.

  “That would probably be a good idea,” John said. He reached down and pulled her up from the floor, taking her into his arms.

  “You might not want to . . . ,” she began, struggling for a moment, but succumbing to his comforting advance.

  “Don’t tell me what I want or don’t want,” he said, glad to have her back with him.

  “Did that help?” she asked, face pressed to his chest.

  “Yeah, I think it did,” he answered.

  “Damakus,” Elijah said from the computer.

  “Somebody is trying to bring him back,” John said in review. “To know of him is to make him stronger. . . . Fear feeds him. And that same person took the children.”

  Theo pulled away slightly to look up at him.

  “If he feeds on fear, then the missing kids . . . ,” she said, obviously having the same realization that he was.

  “There’s a chance they might still be alive.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Too much whisky had left her on the sofa, startled awake to a morning of throbbing pain.

  Driving down the early-morning streets of Arlington, she did her best to ignore the pounding inside her skull, as well as her aching back and joints. What she wouldn’t give for a cup of coffee and a couple of Advil, but they would have to wait.

  The call had come from Boston police, a wellness check on the Fitzgerald family. The Fit
zgeralds had been the first to lose their son to the kidnapper she was tracking, the police having been left strict instructions from her office to let her know of anything that might be going on with the family since their child’s disappearance.

  Recently they’d received a gift from the man who’d stolen their child, a crude drawing of a city on fire—the drawing having been done on a five-inch-by-six-inch piece of skin.

  Brenna found a parking spot on the opposite side of the residential street, and carefully hauled herself from her car. Every joint screamed in protest, and her head joined in just to make sure that it was not forgotten. She felt suddenly nauseated and guessed that she was probably dehydrated.

  Crossing the street to where multiple cruisers were parked, she was met by a patrolman who looked as pale as she felt.

  “Officer Isabel?” he asked. She already had her identification out, and he quickly checked it before continuing.

  “Mrs. Fitzgerald’s sister had called us early this morning to do a wellness check. The sister hadn’t heard from either Mr. or Mrs. Fitzgerald in the last few days. I guess they normally speak daily.”

  Brenna continued on to the front porch where other patrolmen waited. They all had that same pale look as she climbed the steps. They watched her, their eyes warning her—you don’t want to go in there . . . you don’t want to see what we saw. “Go on,” Brenna said, stepping through the open door into the hallway. “I’m guessing they didn’t answer the door?”

  “No,” the patrolman said.

  “So you let yourselves in,” Brenna continued as she entered the kitchen, her eyes taking everything in. There was no sign of anything out of the ordinary. She saw the sink and went to it. The police officer watched her cautiously.

  “Excuse me,” Brenna said, grabbing plastic cup from the strainer and turning on the water to fill it. “If I don’t have a drink of water I’m going to pass out.”

  The officer nodded as she leaned back against the sink to swallow the cold water in multiple gulps. From where she was standing she could see into the small living room.

  “In there?” she questioned, pointing out the location with the cup.

  The patrolman looked briefly in the direction and then quickly looked away. He didn’t want to see what was inside the living room again.

  She finished her water, preparing herself for the inevitable. Rinsing the cup, she put it back in the strainer and headed through the doorway into the living room.

  The Fitzgeralds had seemed like a lovely couple, but now . . .

  She remembered first meeting them, how devastated they’d been. It was as if their very souls had been taken.

  Brenna had understood that feeling completely, secretly studying them, wondering if they would have the strength to make it back. Wondering if they would survive this horror, or would they—not?

  Or would they eventually become something like her?

  That question was answered. She stood before them as they sat so very still on the sofa.

  They would not.

  The Fitzgeralds were dead, but how they had left this life was something that wasn’t readily apparent. “This is exactly how you found them?” Brenna asked as she moved closer, checking for clues as to how they’d died. The couple was still dressed in their robes and pajamas. They were holding hands, but their bodies appeared mummified, as if they had died a long time ago.

  “Yeah,” the patrolman confirmed from the doorway, clearly not wanting to come any closer. “We came in through the back door and this was what we saw.”

  She took a pen from her coat pocket and moved the collar of Mr. Fitzgerald’s pajamas to examine the area around the neck. There weren’t any wounds to be found around the dried, wrinkled flesh on him or his wife.

  It looked as though the very stuff of life had been sucked from their bodies, leaving behind these dried, withered husks.

  “What could have done something like that?” the cop asked.

  She didn’t even have the beginning of an answer, so she remained completely quiet, staring at the corpses and remembering them as they’d been. She’d promised them that she would find their son, and now silently reiterated that pledge.

  There were more sounds from the front door, and she guessed that Forensics had arrived.

  “Hello?” someone called out, and she turned to see that Grinnal had come with a few of the others from his department.

  “Jesus Christ,” she heard one of them mutter as they came into the living room.

  Brenna stepped back, allowing them access. Grinnal looked at her, and then moved his head awkwardly in one direction. She guessed that he wanted a word in private, and gestured for him to follow her to a corner of the kitchen.

  “What’s up?” she asked, tempted to have some more water, but holding back for now.

  “Both our asses are going to be handed to us if we don’t find it pretty goddamn quick,” he said, suppressing his anger.

  She’d never seen Grinnal angry, or had ever even heard his raise his voice, so she was a little confused.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, keeping her voice down.

  “A tooth,” he said, eyeing her as if he suspected she knew all about.

  “A tooth,” she repeated. “Is that supposed to mean something to me and—”

  “From evidence,” he hissed. “There were twenty, and now there are only nineteen. One of the teeth is missing. I checked all over, just to be sure, and realized that I last saw the full set . . .”

  She remembered the last time she had handled all the teeth.

  “Got it,” she said. “Let me look into this.” She was mulling over the fact, feeling her anger rising.

  “You’d better,” Grinnal stressed angrily. “If anybody comes looking and finds that—”

  “I told you I’ll handle it,” she snapped, the intensity of her gaze shutting the squirrelly forensics specialist down.

  Brenna left him standing in the Fitzgeralds’ kitchen and headed for the door.

  She had a visit to make, and a piece of evidence to reclaim. . . .

  John placed a red push pin in the center of Chicago on the map he’d hung haphazardly on the wall, stepped back, and stared.

  How is this possible? he wondered, looking at the locations where all the children had been taken from. Looking at the dates and times, John found it nearly impossible for the children’s abductor to make it from these locations across the country even if he or she owned a private jet. Maybe something with warp speed, but seeing as that—as far as he knew—hadn’t been invented yet . . .

  Theo came to stand beside him, staring at the map intensely. “Perhaps there’s more than one follower of Damakus,” he mused aloud. “All of them collecting their victims and then bringing them back to—”

  “No,” Theo answered, eyes still affixed to the map. “He chooses a single herald to spread his name, a disciple, but only one who is truly worthy of the task.”

  John looked at her. “And you know this . . . ?”

  “Having bonded with the demon . . . I know things now,” she said, still looking at the map. “Things that I didn’t know before.”

  “So this is the work of one person,” John said. “But how?”

  He glanced over to see that Theo’s face was scrunched up, which gave him the impression that she was either in pain, thinking incredibly hard, or . . .

  “John,” someone called out, and he temporarily looked away from his wife to see Stephan peeking into the office. He looked quite concerned.

  “What is it, Stephan?” he asked, moving away from his wife.

  “Ah, I tried to hold her off, but—”

  The door was pushed wider as Agent Isabel stormed in around the personal assistant.

  “Thanks so much,” she said to Stephan.

  John gave him a look that said that they would be having a long discussion about this later.

  “She has a gun,” Stephan explained in a panicked hiss. “And something tells me she
’s not afraid to use it.”

  “Thanks, Steph,” John said. “I’ll take it from here.”

  His assistant quickly backed out, closing the door behind him.

  “Agent Isabel,” John said. “Coffee?” he offered, moving across the room to where a coffeemaker sat gurgling. “I just made a fresh pot.”

  “No, thank you,” she said curtly. “I’m here about the—”

  “I was just about ready to call you,” he said, taking his mug from his desk and bringing it over to the coffeepot. He filled his cup.

  “How convenient,” she said. “Guess I saved you the call.”

  “My wife and I . . .”

  Theodora turned from the map to look at the woman, noticing for the first time that somebody else was there.

  “Your wife?” Agent Isabel questioned. “I thought she was . . .”

  “She’s feeling a good deal better,” John said. “Isn’t that right, Theo?”

  Theo stared at the woman for a little too long, and John was about to intervene when— “Agent Isabel,” Theodora said, coming forward to shake her hand. “It’s a pleasure.”

  The FBI special agent and John’s wife shook hands. “Nice to see that you’re feeling better,” Agent Isabel said.

  “Yes,” Theo responded with a brief smile, turning away and going back to the map.

  “We believe that we may have found a motive for the kidnappings based on the evidence you’ve shared,” John said, holding his steaming mug of coffee before him.

  “Ah yes, evidence,” Agent Isabel said as she moved closer.

  John guessed what she was getting at, and why she looked so angry, but hoped to deter her wrath with facts that would move the case forward. “We believe that the kidnapper is a worshipper of an ancient demonic entity called—”

  “I could arrest you now.” Agent Isabel interrupted him. “Slap the cuffs on you and haul your ass to federal prison.”

  “I’m sure that you’re more than capable of all sorts of unpleasantries,” John said. “But if you care to listen—”

  “I trusted you, but I shouldn’t have,” Isabel continued, not wanting to let it go.

  “I know what this is about, and I shouldn’t have done it, but in this line of investigation—”