The Diablo Horror (The River Book 7)

by Michael Richan

  “That’s silly,” Eliza said. “People like Roy almost as soon as they meet him. He should like people back.”

  “Maybe they’re all self-loathing, and they sense his dislike of them.”

  “That’s silly too. Really, Steven – if you’re not careful, you’ll grow up to be just like him.”

  “I’ve spent my whole life trying to not be like him,” Steven said. “Then, this last year, I’ve tried to emulate him as much as possible, to learn from him. It’s a strange father-son relationship. Jason isn’t that way. We always get along, he doesn’t…” Steven stopped.

  Eliza smiled, and reached out to hold Steven’s hand, wrapped around his paper coffee cup.

  “It’s OK,” Eliza said. “I still think of him as here, too.”

  “It’s that look on his face,” Steven said. “That’s what I see. Him looking at me, knowing something is wrong. He trusts me, I’m his father. But he knows I’m wrong in the head, there’s a force I can’t control. He heard Brett’s story. He knew what happened to children who slept in those beds, in that house. When he went to lie down, he didn’t think he’d wake up to his own father, hovering over him, about to kill him.”

  “You could talk to him, you know,” Eliza said. “Next time you’re at Eximere. The way your father talks to Thomas.”

  “I wouldn’t know what to say,” Steven said. “And I’m sure he hates me.”

  “Alright. Not now, then. Later. When you’re ready. I think he’ll want to hear from you.”

  “Right now I’m just so angry,” Steven said. “Angry at myself, angry at Aka Manah. I hate that fucking demon.”

  Roy returned and sat with them. The table stayed quiet, with Steven looking out the window as the water raced by, seeing the Southworth ferry in the distance. They say vengeful thinking clouds one’s judgment, Steven thought. But I don’t care. Aka Manah has his precious objects to play with while my son lies cold in the ground. Something has to right this wrong. Something has to even the score.

  A seagull landed on the railing of the ferry, just outside the window where Steven was staring. It looked at him while others flew overhead, circling around the ferry, looking for food. As he watched, it cocked its head, eyeballing Steven, waiting.

  I’ve got about as much control over this situation as that bird, Steven thought. Exactly none.

  ◊

  After the ferry landed, they drove up the peninsula to Port Townsend without stopping. With Eliza’s help, Steven navigated to the old downtown stretch of the city, parking the car on a side street. The address Elliott gave them took them to a doorway tucked between two shops on Water Street. They ducked into its entryway, out of the path of tourists. Once again there was an intercom to deal with.

  Eliza pressed the button and talked to a voice on the other end. When the door buzzed, Steven grabbed it and held it open for the others.

  The inner door opened to a long stairway leading up to the second floor. They walked up and turned a corner, to be met with a single door under a hanging light.

  Eliza knocked.

  The door opened, revealing the exact opposite of Elliott. Victor was small, just over five feet tall, and he was old – white hair, white moustache, and beard trimmed short. He greeted them and asked them inside. Steven noticed that he was a little hunched over when he walked.

  “Something to drink?” Victor asked them.

  Yup, the exact opposite of Elliott, Steven thought.

  They all passed on a drink, and Victor asked them to sit in his library, a room filled with books and large chairs. Steven noticed the house was full of antiques, placed with great care.

  “Oh, another view!” Eliza said as she looked out the windows of the library. The water’s edge was just a few feet from the back of the building, and she could see the public pier to the left.

  “I’ve noticed that people who deal with demons live next to water,” Steven said, wondering if his subject was a little impolite to begin with.

  “It’s true, they do,” Victor said, joining them. “Do you live next to water, young man? You’ll have to remind me of your name until I get it right.”

  “It’s Steven, and as a matter of fact, I do. My house is about a block from Lake Washington.”

  “And has that proximity been of any benefit in your dealings with demons?” Victor asked.

  “No, not really,” Steven answered, “not that I’ve noticed.”

  “That’s exactly why I’ve had this whole house under special protection for years,” Victor said. “Some are scared by water, others aren’t. Some are frightened by waterfalls, or dams. Some aren’t so scared and take chances. I don’t like to take chances. Costs me an arm and leg, but I pay for the protection, every month. It’s what gives me peace of mind. There’s plenty of them out there that’d like a piece of me, if they could get it.”

  “We’re sorry for just dropping in like this,” Eliza said. “We’re in need of an expert such as yourself.”

  “If you’d called me first, I probably wouldn’t have seen you,” Victor said. “I’m retired and I don’t want to get wrapped up in anything. But since you drove all the way up here, and I’m feeling like some guests would be a nice change today, I’m willing to hear what you’ve got.”

  “Well, thanks for that,” Steven said. He recounted their experience with Aka Manah and Diablo. He left out details about Eximere and Jason’s death, ending with their encounter with Judith earlier that day.

  “First off,” Victor said, “there are some things about Judith you should know.”

  “I knew it!” Roy said. “She’s a hack, isn’t she?”

  “No, not a hack,” Victor said. “She’s well known in demon-fighting circles, and she’s had a lot of experience with them, so she’s knowledgeable. But, let’s just say, her interests are not aligned with yours.”

  “What does that mean?” Eliza asked.

  “She’s made certain deals herself,” Victor said. “She fought demons her whole life, for forty years. She retired without a penny to her name. Yet she lives in a big mansion in Gig Harbor, no?”

  “It’s a beautiful house,” Eliza said.

  “After forty years, she knew if she wanted to live comfortably, she could do it by cutting a deal or two. Many demons have access to vast amounts of money, though they couldn’t care less about it. They only use it to influence humans to do what they want.”

  “So the house is a result of a deal?” Roy asked.

  “One deal of a rumored several,” Victor said. “The reason she told you you can’t kill a demon is because that’s also a deal she’s cut. She knows how, but she’s not allowed to tell people anymore.”

  “All that bullcrap about the mirrors!” Roy said angrily.

  “You didn’t happen to see her legs, did you?” Victor asked.

  “No,” Roy said. “She always had them covered up.”

  “If they are even there,” Victor said. “There were rumors a demon had transformed them when she got a little mouthy with him.”

  “Not hard to imagine,” Roy said.

  “And I’ll bet she told you she didn’t know what your markings would do,” Victor said to Steven. “She probably impressed you with a planchette?”

  Steven was surprised that Victor knew about his markings without him telling him. He remembered when Judith showed him the markings on his palms, two red diamonds side by side, glowing under the glass she provided. He subconsciously grabbed his right hand with his left, and rubbed the spot where the markings were with his left thumb.

  “She just said they were a warning to them,” Steven replied to Victor, “like an orange frog’s skin color warns snakes that it’s poisonous.”

  “Ooo, she skated close on that one!” Victor said. “My boy, she’s got an object that would have told you immediately what your markings do. She’s one of the few people on the west coast who has one! And I suspect she didn’t use it on you because if it had revealed that you can kill demons, she would have viola
ted one of her deals with them.”

  “I knew she was hiding something!” Roy said.

  “Aka Manah said I was lethal,” Steven said, “in the suicide forest. But he didn’t say how. And he suggested that it didn’t impact him. He said he was ancient, as though that made him impervious.”

  “Demons lie,” Victor said. “And they mix truth with lies, all the while they’re scaring you and intimidating you. It usually works. It did on me, during my younger years.”

  “Do you have one of Judith’s objects?” Steven asked. “Can you tell me what the markings mean?”

  “Sadly, no,” Victor said. “My father had one, and it was supposed to come to me through him, but he loaned it to his brother, and it went missing when his brother disappeared.”

  Eximere, Steven thought. He looked at Roy, who nodded, obviously having the same thought.

  “Can you describe what this device looks like?” Steven asked.

  “Let’s see,” Victor said, looking up at the ceiling. “It had a wooden handle, like a kitchen spoon. On the end was a round bone from an animal, attached with a large amount of white twine. The whole thing was maybe eight inches long.”

  Steven tried his best to mask his reaction to Victor’s description. “If I ever encounter it, I’ll return it to you,” he said.

  Victor laughed. “Odds of that are small,” he said. “They’re very rare, so whoever has it now is unlikely to give it up.”

  “Have you ever met anyone who could kill a demon?” Steven asked.

  “Human?” Victor asked. “Only stories. Supposedly there was a man who lived in Hungary who could do it. I heard he charged a lot of money. I never saw him in action, but people I respect told me he was the real deal.”

  “So it is possible,” Steven asked.

  “Oh, yes, possible,” Victor said. “Just very rare. Which is why, more often than not, people strike deals with them. That’s usually the best you can get. There’s a chance your markings make you someone who can kill demons, but the odds are much greater that you have an ability to repel them, or limit one of the things they do.”

  “But he said I was lethal,” Steven said.

  “As I told you, demons lie,” Victor replied.

  “What about the bodies in the pit?” Roy asked. “Any idea why he was so interested in that, even after Steven gave him the Agimat?”

  “Maybe,” Victor said. “Depends. There are many Agimats out there, with all kinds of different powers. Can you tell me what this one looked like?”

  “I can show you a picture of it,” Steven said, removing his phone and swiping through photos until he found the one of the Agimat he’d given to Aka Manah. He showed the phone to Victor.

  “Ah,” Victor said, “let me compare this to my book, will you?”

  “Go ahead,” Steven said. Victor rose from his chair and removed a volume from one of his library shelves. It was large and had a bright red leather spine. He took the book over by the window, where there was a small table and more light. He began flipping through the book, stopping to compare the image on the phone with the images he found on the book’s pages.

  He stopped on one page, reading. “You should take a look at this,” he said, waving Steven over.

  Steven looked over Victor’s shoulder at the book on the table. It was a hand drawing of an Agimat, surrounded by text. Its markings were the same as his picture. There was another drawing next to it of something small and rectangular. It had similar markings.

  “Do you think this might be it?” Victor asked.

  “Yes, that’s it,” Steven said. “But what’s that next to it?”

  Victor pointed at the small rectangle. “This?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Steven said.

  “That, my young man, is the other half of the Agimat.”

  “What?” Steven asked, confused.

  “The other half,” Victor repeated. “This particular Agimat’s power is split over two pieces. And it looks like it was a pretty powerful one, too.”

  Victor read the text surrounding the drawings. It looked like a strange language to Steven, not unlike sections of Roy’s book that he couldn’t read. When Victor was done scanning the page, he handed the phone back to Steven and took the book with him back to his chair.

  “According to this, the Agimat was the first created by a member of a Trappist monastery in the Philippines. The fluids of twelve aborted fetuses were used in its creation, which accounts for why it’s so powerful. The monk who made it was gifted, and the Agimat was considered so beautiful and remarkable, a Bishop requested that it be sent to Rome for examination. It never arrived; it was stolen from the person who was carrying it. It was then sold and came under the control of Aka Manah, who, along with two other demons, used the power of the object to twist its properties to their purposes. That’s one of their favorite pastimes, desecrating and perverting objects.”

  “So it is his,” Steven said, “but only because he stole it.”

  “Sounds like it,” Victor said. “The Agimat consists of two parts; the necklace, and its brother, the wooden piece embedded under the skin.”

  “Whoa,” Roy said. “Under the skin?”

  “It’s a very thin piece of wood, almost so thin you’d think it was a thick parchment. Filipinos use a knife to lift up a piece of their skin, embed the fragment, and let it heal over. The two work in harmony with each other, the amulet hanging from their neck, and the wooden piece under their skin. You need both for the Agimat to work.”

  “That’s what he was after,” Steven said. “The piece in the ax man’s skin. It’s at the bottom of the pit. That’s why he wanted to know where the pit was.”

  “Why didn’t he just send us back in to get it?” Roy asked. “I get that he was scared of the dam, but he could have kept Eliza ill and forced us to retrieve the wooden part from the pit, right?”

  “No, he wouldn’t have,” Victor said. “It was better for him to have you think things were done and over. Too risky to send you after it.”

  “Risky?” Eliza asked. “How?”

  “Because this Agimat, in the hands of someone like you, young man, sorry, I forgot your name again…”

  “Steven.”

  “Yes, Steven, I’m sorry – Steven, in your hands, it’s dangerous. Too dangerous for him to risk you getting it, even though you may not have known what it was.”

  “How?” Steven asked.

  “This Agimat doesn’t revert to its previous owner, as he suggested. It reverts to the person with the embedded half. If you had that half, and for some reason he lost control of the Agimat, it would revert to you, giving you both halves. Then you’d have its power. I’m guessing that, in the hands of someone marked like you, both halves would be real trouble for him, and he knows it.”

  “And he probably knew we were working with Judith, and that she’d never tell us about this,” Roy said.

  “Probably,” Victor said.

  “If he was too wary of the dam to get the Agimat in the first place,” Victor said, “he won’t go get the other half by himself. He’ll send someone in to get it for him. Someone he tricks, or blackmails, or hires. If you were to get the other half before he does…”

  “Yes?” Steven asked. “What?”

  “Well, you came to me to help you figure out how to deal with this demon, right?” Victor asked.

  “Yes,” Steven said. “Preferably kill. But anything that hurts him, I’m willing to do.”

  “I can’t promise you that the Agimat will kill him,” Victor said. “But if you were to get the wooden half before he does, and we embed it in you, you’d achieve a stalemate with him, at the very least. And if the necklace reverts to you at some point, you’d have the complete Agimat, and you’d be able to figure out what it does. You may be able to use it against him.”

  “Or it may turn me into a religious freak, swinging an ax,” Steven said.

  “No,” Victor said, “I doubt that. That happened because the man who had it
was deranged to begin with, prone to religious zealotry. You don’t appear to be the type. I presume you do not believe you can kill someone and the Agimat will bring them back?”

  “No, I do not,” Steven said. “We know for sure that isn’t one of its powers.”

  “But it does do something so powerful this demon doesn’t want you to have both halves,” Victor said. “Even you touching the wooden half is too risky for him, since he knows it sets you up to receive it, if it ever reverts.”

  “What triggers the reversion?” Roy asked.

  “Could be any number of things,” Victor said. “Becoming physically lost, stolen, passing through a barrier of some kind. There might even be an invocation that would cause it to revert, which is something we should investigate.”

  “What if he destroys his half?” Steven asked. “Couldn’t he just burn the necklace?”

  “He can’t destroy it or change it without both halves,” Victor said. “So you see, if you get that wooden half before he does, and we get it embedded in you, you’ll have your stalemate. He won’t risk it reverting to you. My guess is he’ll hide the Agimat away, and you’ll never hear from him again.”

  “I say we go get it,” Roy said. “Right now.”

  “You saw the pit when you were trancing,” Steven said to Roy. “Any idea how deep it is?”

  “No, didn’t see down it,” Roy said. “We should take a rope and a winch.”

  “Bring it back here,” Victor said, “so I can embed it in you. You can’t do it yourself, you’ll need my help. Once you get it away from the dam, you’ll be at the demon’s mercy until you get onto the Coupeville ferry. From there, it’s water the whole way here. Wait, I’m going to give you something.”

  Victor got out of his chair and walked to a small desk in the corner. He pulled out a drawer, and removed something wrapped in a dark black cloth. He unwrapped it as he walked back to Steven.

  “Here, take this,” Victor said. “I’m retired, and this place is protected, so I can afford to loan it to you.”