The Demonists

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

The thing in the tank continued to splash, slapping its many arms against the glass. It was hungry. Christopher could practically hear its thoughts inside his head. Damakus was hungry and soon they would all be food to sustain his awesome glory.

  For a moment that seemed perfectly fine to him. Perfectly reasonable. They were all here for Damakus. . . .

  The thing in the tank was inside his head and he found himself sickened by its psychic touch. Christopher screamed briefly, nothing more than a pathetic yelp really, bringing his forehead down as hard as he could upon his desktop to drive away the squirming sensations inside his head.

  He knew that this was the beginning of his end, that the thing in the tank—Damakus—would slither itself into their brains and prepare them for their deaths. They were going to be its sacrifice, one of the final steps of returning the creature—this god—to its former glory.

  As it had been inside his head, Christopher had gotten a glimpse of what was inside the creature’s.

  Did it even have a head? He didn’t think so.

  The question was enough of a distraction for him to begin to panic. He didn’t want to die, and he knew that if he didn’t do something very quickly, that would most certainly be his fate.

  He could feel it trying to slither even farther into the crevices of his brain, to assure him that everything was just fine, but Christopher didn’t want to hear it.

  The boy decided that he had to do something. He had to get away from this room—from this building—from the thing inside the tank.

  Damakus.

  He reached beneath his desk, grabbing hold of the filthy chain and pulling with all his might. It was foolish for him to try—he already knew that, having done the same thing over and over again—and still the chain was too strong.

  But he knew that the answer to his problem was somehow connected. The chain was what kept him here, in this room.

  The chain.

  Christopher slid out of his chair again to the floor beneath his desk. He’d done this all before, but he could not help himself as he inspected each and every link of the chain, stopping at the metal ring that encircled his boney ankle.

  He grabbed at the circle, turning it around on the chafed skin above his foot. Christopher became entranced, staring at the metal cuff, wondering if the thoughts that were taking shape inside his mind could be translated into some form of reality.

  He knew that he had lost weight since being brought here, since the ring had been placed around his ankle. The ring was sized for how he had been.

  Not how he was now.

  He sat on the floor and pulled his foot closer to him. Grabbing the ring, he attempted to pull it down over his heel, but there was still too much foot.

  But not as much as there had been before.

  The fact of too much foot did not deter him, and he continued to pull down upon the ring, twisting and turning with all his might. The process was painful, and he temporarily considered any other alternative, but there wasn’t anything else at the moment.

  Christopher continued to work, trying to ignore the pain and think of how things would be when he was able to escape. The thoughts of his murdered father just fueled his efforts all the more, giving him that little bit of extra strength to try and force the ring down over the top of his foot and heel.

  Time was his enemy. He had no idea when the teacher might return. The pain was making him dizzy, but something told him that if he was to stop he would never begin again and he would die here with all the other students.

  The thing in the tank at the back of the room became more active, splashing about in its filthy habitat.

  Christopher’s heart raced, and he was panting from the exertion.

  Wouldn’t it better if you slowed down for a bit? asked a voice from somewhere inside his skull. Wait a few minutes for the pain to recede and then—No.

  His actions became all the more furious. He wondered if the others noticed what he was doing, roused from their stupor to see that he was going to try and live, that he was not content to sit here and eventually die, sacrificed to whatever that nasty thing in the tank— It responded violently, throwing its muscular form against the aquarium glass. Is it trying to get out? Christopher wondered. Is it trying to break free to stop me from— He chanced a fleeting glimpse at his foot, and nearly died then and there from the shock of what he saw.

  An empty metal ring.

  It took a moment for that to sink in, to permeate through the cloud of agony.

  The ring was no longer around his ankle. Christopher wasn’t sure if he was seeing that properly, maneuvering himself on the filthy wooden floor for a closer look, just to be certain.

  Yes. Yes, the ring was empty.

  He was free. He’d done it. He was free.

  He scrambled to his feet, expecting the others to be watching him with curiosity, but they remained silent and still, heads down on their desktops.

  Waiting for their end.

  The thing in the tank called to him, a horrible tickling sensation, an itch that he was unable to scratch.

  Holding on to the side of his desk, he cautiously looked toward the back of the classroom where the tank waited. The thing in the filthy water watched him, multiple sets of yellow eyes pressed to the glass.

  It compelled him to come closer, but Christopher chose instead to look toward the front of the room, and the open doorway beyond it.

  “I’m leaving,” Christopher announced to anyone who was listening, moving out into the center of the classroom aisle and almost falling.

  The pain in his foot was nearly crippling, but he couldn’t let that stop him. He had his eye on the prize, and that prize was the open doorway and an eventual path to freedom.

  He was limping crazily, but he was making progress.

  He was getting closer to the doorway.

  With that realization the thing in the tank surged up out of the filthy water, thick black tentacles covered in razor-sharp spines glistening in the faint light of the room as they hung over the lip of the aquarium.

  It beckoned to him, the thing that would eventually become a god extending its muscular limbs and calling him back. Again he felt it inside his head, telling him to return to his seat, that all would be fine if he only came back.

  Christopher actually caught himself turning back, but then he saw her. The little girl with no teeth had raised her head, and was looking at him with dark, hollow eyes.

  Go, she mouthed.

  And he did as she told him, practically throwing himself toward the open doorway and the darkness behind it. He would do it for her. He would get out into the world and bring people to help her and the others, before it was too late.

  Christopher experienced a surge of strength, adrenaline coursing through his veins as he made it out into the hallway of the schoolhouse. He had no idea of the size of the place and was surprised to see how small it was. It was practically a one-room structure, like something that would have been used in the olden days, he thought as he searched the darkened hall for an exit.

  There was a door up ahead of him, the exit sign above it dark. He limped to the door, slamming all his body weight against the metal bar and pushing it open to freedom.

  Freedom. Christopher wobbled upon the top concrete step that led down into . . .

  Nothing. There was some grass that circled around the front and to the back of the building, but beyond that there was . . .

  Nothing. It looked like fog, but it was more than that.

  Or less. He carefully stepped down to the grass, limping to where it suddenly stopped, peering into the white of . . .

  Nothing. Balancing on one leg, Christopher shoved his hand into the wall of white. It was incredibly cold within and he quickly pulled back.

  His thoughts were a jumble as he studied the area, the schoolhouse sitting on top of a small piece of land, an island in a sea of . . .

  Nothing. At first Christopher wasn’t sure what was happening; it had been so long since he’d last
experienced the warmth of the fluids spilling from his eyes.

  Tears. He was crying. He hadn’t used them all up after all.

  It was no consolation as he stood there before the wall of shifting white, trying to understand where he was. Christopher was so deep in thought that he didn’t hear the sound of the Teacher’s arrival.

  “And what do we have here?” the Teacher asked, stepping from the cold embrace of nothing onto the grassy island.

  The boy jumped back, losing his balance and falling to the grass.

  The Teacher’s filthy clothing was covered in blood and pocked with holes. He strode across the ground to loom over Christopher, two bubblelike spheres undulating in the air around the man’s head. They reminded Christopher of jellyfish that he’d seen on a school field trip the previous year.

  “You,” the Teacher said with a snarl, obviously remembering the trouble that Christopher had caused before. “I’m surprised, really,” he said, reaching down to grab him by the front of his pajama top and haul him up to his feet.

  Christopher’s eyes were drawn to the bullet hole in the middle of the Teacher’s forehead, but he forced himself to instead watch the strange spheres that floated around the Teacher’s head. They were like bubbles of very thin skin, and he could see that something moved around frantically inside the weightless globules, as if trying to escape.

  “You almost make me doubt my skills as an educator,” the Teacher said, tossing Christopher over his shoulder and heading back for the schoolhouse.

  “But that just means I’ll need to work a little harder.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Agent Isabel asked frantically.

  Theodora listened to the woman’s question. She’d fallen forward to the ground outside the house, trying to return her body to its human shape. To push the demon back where it belonged.

  “He’s not here anymore,” she said in between pained grunts and the popping of joints. “He’s not here . . . or at least the child isn’t.”

  The FBI special agent looked around, not quite sure what she should be doing now.

  John came to kneel beside her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, concern in his tone.

  Theo started to stand, her spine cracking noisily as it returned to its natural—human—shape.

  “If he’s not here . . . on Earth, where?” Agent Isabel asked, confused by the whole affair. “Mars? Is he on fucking Mars?”

  Theo shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “The child isn’t on this plane of reality,” she attempted to explain.

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” the agent asked again, not understanding this in the least.

  “It means exactly what she said,” John said, coming to his wife’s defense. “Somehow the child has been taken away from this reality to another. That probably explains how he’s been able to travel unnoticed all over the country in such short periods of time to collect his victims.”

  Agent Isabel listened, tried to digest, but obviously had little luck.

  “You’ve completely lost me,” she said. “Are you saying that our perpetrator could be on some other planet or something? That he could actually be on Mars?”

  “Not another planet,” Theo interjected. “Another plane of reality . . . another dimension. A world that exists alongside this one . . . an other side.”

  Theo watched the woman. She seemed to get smaller, crushed beneath the weight of this latest revelation.

  “So there’s no way to get to him . . . to track the children,” she said.

  “I’m sure there’s a way,” John said. “But it would probably take days of research to find exactly what we’re searching for, and by then it will likely be too late.”

  Theo could see the frustration working on her husband as well.

  And then she heard the laughing somewhere deep inside her skull. The demons were amused by their human antics, their human perception of things. She silenced them with a thought, but there was one voice that remained. One that said that it just might have answers to their questions.

  She moved away from the others.

  “Theo?” her husband called to her.

  “So, what now?” Agent Isabel demanded to know. “Do we just sit around and wait for some resurrected demon god to show up and—”

  “You don’t want that,” Theo heard her husband say. “That would be very bad.”

  Theodora ignored the sounds of her husband’s concerns, standing alone in a patch of darkness to reach out.

  To communicate.

  “Theo,” she heard John call to her again.

  “John, please—just a moment,” she said angrily, holding out a hand to stop his progress.

  She let her thoughts go, traveling inside her mind to the deep darkness where they waited.

  Where answers might still be found.

  The demons had gone deep, driven to hide in the nooks and crannies of her subconscious.

  “I’m here,” she announced, the sigils on her flesh creating a shimmering corona of yellowish orange around her.

  She knew they were there, watching her silently, and she extended a hand to disperse the light from her body so that she might see them.

  They were there as she sensed, a sea of evil and inhumanity, the ones closer to where she stood shielding their horrible eyes from the discomfort caused by her inner light.

  A thousand demons. This was the number that inhabited her body, a fact that suddenly filled her head.

  One of them was being cute, reaching out, providing her with answers to questions she had pondered.

  “Well?” she said, looking at them all, showing them that she was unafraid.

  And the demons stared back, but not as afraid as she imagined they should be.

  “Which one of you is it?” she asked. “Which one of you wants to talk?”

  They looked at each other, these horrible manifestations of evil, and eventually all turned their attentions back to her.

  “All right, then,” she said, her patience waning. “I could force you—hurt each and every one of you, but I just don’t have the time.”

  She had begun to withdraw, to return to the physical world, when she noticed across the sea of the demonic that a fissure was starting to form. That something was moving down the center of them, the monstrosities parting to let it pass.

  Theo paused her return to the physical and waited.

  The demons in front moved to either side, and a child emerged.

  Theodora gasped, feeling a violent knife stab of emotion in her heart.

  “You wicked, wicked things,” she muttered beneath her breath, wishing then and there that she was capable of killing them all in the most horrid and painful ways possible.

  There was snickering amongst the demons as the child presented himself.

  “I would have thought you would be comforted by this form,” the demon wearing the shape of Billy Sharp said.

  Theodora glared, her anger simmering.

  Billy Sharp had lived next door to the Knights when she was a young girl, a lovely little boy with a contagious smile and a mischievous way about him, who died two weeks before his sixth birthday from drowning.

  Only a few years older herself at the time, Theodora remembered the nearly overpowering sadness at the loss of the younger child whom she treated like her baby brother.

  It had always bothered her that neither she nor her mother had been able to communicate with the dead child’s spirit. That he seemed to have moved on to the afterlife without a trace.

  “I found the image of the child just floating around your psyche and believed that it would put you at ease,” the demon wearing Billy’s form said. “It appears that I was mistaken.”

  “You found him just floating around, did you?” she asked, reacting to the cruelty of the demon’s specific words, but what would one expect from a demon?

  “Perhaps we should do this another time,” the demon said, starting to make his way back into the
monstrous crowd gathered.

  “Wait,” she called to it. She hated to think of it as a child—as Billy.

  The demon stopped, turning toward her again. She noticed that he was wearing the striped shirt, short pants, and running shoes that Billy had been wearing on the day he died.

  “You hinted that there might be answers to a particular quandary we are experiencing,” she continued.

  The little boy slowly nodded. “There very well might be,” he said.

  “And do you know what that problem is?” she asked.

  “We know all your problems,” the demon said, smiling with the beatific face of a child.

  “Don’t fuck with me,” Theo warned, her anger simmering just below the surface.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” the demon child said.

  The others roared, laughed, shrieked, and tittered their amusement, and the child turned his attention toward them.

  “Silence,” he commanded, and they did as they were told.

  Who was this mysterious demonic presence to warrant such a level of respect? Or was it something more akin to fear? Theodora wondered.

  The child looked back at her, the expression he now wore vacant of any sign of innocence.

  “You and your people are searching for the disciple of Damakus,” Billy said in a matter-of-fact tone. “But he’s not to be found on the earthly plane. Oh where, oh where could he be?”

  “That is most certainly the question,” Theo said. “Lives are at stake,” she added. “The lives of children.”

  “Yum,” Billy said, and for a brief instant his baby teeth were razor sharp and plentiful.

  “Don’t,” she began.

  “I know, I know,” Billy said. “Don’t fuck with you.”

  “Well?” she demanded, growing tired of the dance. “Do you have answers for me or not?”

  “It all depends,” Billy said.

  “On?”

  “On what you can do for me.”

  Theo laughed at the monster’s audacity. “Seriously?” she asked. She extended her bare arms, presenting her sigils, the light that they threw bathing the child and the front row of demons behind him.

  “You sound as though you’ve forgotten who’s in charge now,” she said.