by Bryan, JL
Reese snatched up the shattered wine glass by the stem. Broken fragments of the bowl jutted out from it like curved, jagged little knives.
Reese leaped to her feet with inhuman speed and slashed the length of broken glass at Cassidy’s throat.
Cassidy screamed and dodged back, and the broken glass sliced open her chin. The backs of her knees hit the edge of the mattress. She collapsed into a sitting position on her bed.
“May you eat FILTH in DARKNESS until the end of all days, you mongrel SHIT-BEAST!” Reese’s voice boomed, rattling Cassidy’s bones in their sockets.
Reese advanced on her, raising the broken glass, and Cassidy pushed herself backward against the cushions on her bed. With the wall behind her, she could retreat no farther. She held up her hands to protect her face.
“Leave her alone!” Barb shouted. “Don’t touch Cassidy!”
Reese’s face twisted in a look of hatred as she snarled at Barb. The entire shape of her head changed into something monstrous, every muscle in her face wrenching far beyond its natural range.
Reese’s mouth dropped, and then kept on dropping, as though she were a snake that had unhinged its lower jaw to eat a large prey animal. Her lips tore open on both sides as her mouth stretched. It was suddenly, impossibly, much larger than the rest of her head, her jaws lined with two jumbled rows of dark yellow shark teeth.
From Reese’s enormous jaws emerged a howl of such intensity that Cassidy’s ears popped and she wondered whether her eardrums had been blown out. Everything in Cassidy’s field of vision seemed to vibrate—the armchair, the walls, the laundry basket in the corner, the collection of pins and buttons on her lampshade as her lamp rolled across the floor.
The howl blasted Barb’s short brown hair away from her face and sent her staggering back against the closed door to the hall, screaming.
Cassidy looked around her cluttered room for any kind of weapon, but the closest she could find was the putt-putt club she’d won at MonkeyTime Family Fun Center on her ninth birthday, its handle topped with a plastic purple monkey. She grabbed it up with both hands and stood shakily on her mattress.
Reese stalked toward Cassidy again. The panting breath pouring out between Reese’s enormous open jaws was so putrid and thick Cassidy could see it like a yellow haze in the air.
When Cassidy was six years old, she’d found a dead possum in the parking lot, baking in the summer heat, its belly swollen with ripe decay. Cassidy had poked it with a stick, and it had ruptured open, spilling maggot-ridden guts onto the blacktop. The smell alone had sent her vomiting into the parking-lot shrubbery, her eyes watering. The stink of Reese’s smoldering hot breath was similar, but a thousand times stronger.
Reese let out another deep, rumbling roar and lunged toward Cassidy, her enormous jaws open wide, her teeth large enough to bite through Cassidy’s skull.
Cassidy swung the golf club at Reese’s approaching jaws but missed, striking her in the upper face instead. The heel of the club thunked into her open right eye with a moist, squishy sound that made Cassidy shudder.
Cassidy had time to think Oh God I blinded her I crushed her eyeball before Reese snatched the club away. It pulled free of her eye socket with a soft kissing sound, and Cassidy had a glimpse of the shapeless mass of gore where her pretty blue eye had been.
Reese’s upper and lower eyelids clomped together like the lips of a toothless mouth. Reese cried blood from beneath the sunken lid.
Reese sniffed the bloody head of the club like a dog, then flung it out through the open balcony door. The club sailed over the railing and vanished into the heavy rain.
Barb, looking terrified, snatched up the lamp from the floor and bashed it into the back of Reese’s head. The base of the lamp dug a bloody furrow into Reese’s scalp, and Cassidy half-expected the girl to drop dead, but Reese just snarled and swiped at the lamp as though it were an annoying fly.
Reese spun around and slapped Barb hard enough to lift her off her feet. Barb spun through the air and slammed into Cassidy’s dresser, then crashed to the floor, moaning in pain.
Tamila had been standing next to the dresser, by the burning, peach-scented nub of the last candle, watching the scene unfold with her mouth open in horror, but Barb’s impact against the dresser seemed to startle her into action.
Tamila darted to the center of the room and picked up the homemade Ouija board, spilling a pile of bloody glass shards onto the carpet. She dipped a corner of the board into the one remaining candle.
The fire quickly ate its way up the board, making Reese’s bloody handprints hiss and steam. A sulfurous stink filled the room.
“I’m burning!” Reese screamed. She’d instantly reverted to her normal self—no giant jaws, her head shrunk back to its usual shape. Blood streamed from her sunken right eyelid, and one trickle of it ran down the side of her nose to fall, drop by drop, from her golden nose ring.
Tamila gaped at Reese while she held the poster board aloft like a blazing torch, the flames scorching an ugly brown stain into Cassidy’s cheap plaster ceiling. Barb groaned helplessly on the floor.
“I’m on fire! Help me!” Reese shrieked, holding out her arms toward Cassidy in a pleading gesture, terror in her remaining blue eye. Patches of her skin blistered and darkened on her neck, arms, stomach, and legs. Smoldering holes opened in her bra top and low-slung denim shorts.
Cassidy jumped off the bed and snatched the burning board from Tamila’s hand, screaming in pain as the fire scorched her fingertips. She flung open her door and ran across the hall to the narrow, dingy bathroom she shared with her little brother, where she hurled the burning board into the chipped tub.
Cassidy cranked on the cold water, soaking the board and extinguishing the flames. She grabbed the remaining chunk of poster board and ripped it with her hands. She stopped when nothing remained but a skin of white shreds, black ash, and red glitter floating on the rising surface of the water. Much later, it would occur to her that she could have simply thrown it into the rain outside.
She darted back to her room. Barb lay in front of the dresser, wincing and touching her side gingerly, keeping her wary eyes on Reese.
Reese knelt on the carpet, sobbing and shrieking in pain, her eyes squeezed shut, blood still leaking from her ruined eye socket. Her hand was wide open, the glass shards still stuck in her fingers and palm. Tamila knelt beside her, her arm around the girl’s shoulder, trying to comfort her even though she’d been something monstrous and inhuman only moments earlier.
“Reese?” Cassidy whispered, confused and frightened. She wasn’t sure what else to say or do, so she just whispered the name uselessly again: “Reese? Reese?”
“Is it over?” Barb asked.
Lightning flashed outside the window and thunder shook the floor. A booming, pounding sound echoed through the apartment. A frightened look passed among Cassidy, Barb, and Tamila—Reese was too lost in her own pain and confusion to respond.
“It sounds like someone’s at the front door,” Cassidy whispered.
“Who knocks like that? Cops?” Barb asked.
“It could be the demon,” Tamila whispered. “Don’t open that door, Cassidy.”
“Why would it knock on the door?” Cassidy asked.
“Cassidy, you haven’t listened to me once tonight!” Tamila snapped. “Just trust me this time. Don’t open it.”
The pounding struck again, even louder and more insistent, like a giant creature trying to kick its way inside.
“I’ll just look through the peephole,” Cassidy whispered. “Everybody stay quiet.”
“No!” Tamila whispered, but Cassidy left the room. She tiptoed through the small, dark living room, then reached over the breakfast bar into the kitchen and lifted the butcher knife from the chopping block, its sharp edge wet with congealed tomato sauce and mozzarella blobs from the pizza they’d baked earlier.
Gripping the knife in one hand, Cassidy approached the door. It shuddered again with another series of loud
knocks.
Her heart thumping, she leaned down to peer through the tiny lens.
Outside stood two boys—Dex McKenna, a long-haired muscular boy in a black tank top, the boy Reese had been so eager to screw, accompanied by his little minion, Kyle Bowers, who had a few hairs around his mouth that he probably believed constituted a goatee. Kyle’s T-shirt depicted what looked like a Barbie doll stuck on the prongs of a red horseshoe, and the caption read CHICK MAGNET.
Kyle pounded again, loudly and obnoxiously, then cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted: “Open up, ladies!”
“Stop yelling!” Dex punched him in the arm.
Reese unlocked and opened the door.
“What’s up what’s up, big Amazon chick?” Kyle asked. He was four inches shorter than Cassidy. His eyes went from low-lidded and cocky to wide and shocked when he saw the bleeding cut on her chin and the butcher knife with tomato sauce in her hand. “Whoa, who did you kill?”
“It’s just Dex and Kyle!” Cassidy called toward her bedroom. “Bring Reese out.”
“Oh, yeah, bring her out.” Dex winked at Cassidy as he stepped through the door.
“Are you bringing out a chick for me, too?” Kyle asked.
“Shut up, Kyle,” Dex told him.
Barb and Tamila emerged from the hallway with Reese slumped between them, her arms supported by their shoulders. Her clothes were singed, glass shards jutted from her bleeding hand, blood trickled down from her ruined eye. Her one good eye was closed, and she was still sobbing.
“Holy shit, she’s all fucked up!” Dex said. He looked at the butcher knife in Cassidy’s hand. “What happened?”
“Looks like this part-aaay got cra-zaaay!” Kyle said.
“Shut up, Kyle,” Dex said.
“It was an accident,” Cassidy said. “You have to take her to the emergency room, Dex.”
“Whoa, whoa, why me?” Dex asked, holding out his hands. “I just got here.”
“You’ve got a car,” Cassidy said.
“Yeah, but Reese’s got a car—”
“She can’t drive right now!” Cassidy snapped.
“Yeah, but one of you could—”
“Look, Dex!” Barb scowled at him. Her shirt was spattered with blood from Reese’s hand. “You came here planning to fuck her, right?”
“Uh...I mean, well...” Dex looked away.
“If you’re ready to have sex with someone, you should be ready to take them to the hospital,” Barb told him. “Unless you’re a complete asshole. Right?”
“Uh...yeah.” Dex scratched his head. “Shit, if I’m taking her, we need to go. She’s all fucked up.”
“Can you walk, Reese?” Tamila asked gently.
Reese kept sobbing and didn’t respond.
“You’ll have to carry her,” Barb told Dex.
“Damn it!” Dex sighed and walked to Reese, rolling his eyes. Tamila looked worried as she saw him scoop up Reese in his arms and carry her out over the threshold. He paused on the concrete walkway outside, looking back.
Kyle Bowers leaned against the door frame and cracked open a tall can of beer.
“Looks like it’s just me and the ladies tonight. So what’s up, Barb?” Kyle raised a suggestive eyebrow at her.
“You’re going with Dex,” Cassidy told him quickly.
“Wha-aat? Why do I have to go?”
“Because we told you to!” Barb snapped. “Now get the fuck out of here before I throw you over the railing out there.”
“Hey, hey, so hostile.” Kyle took a swig of beer, then shrugged and joined Dex out on the walkway.
“I’ll go, too,” Tamila said, stepping out the door after them.
“Are you sure?” Cassidy asked.
“Yeah.” Tamila tilted her head at the boys. “I feel like she needs a girl with her.”
Reese, lying limp and half-conscious in Dex’s arms, let out a small moan.
“Okay, true. That’s really nice of you, Tami.” Especially considering how nasty Reese was to you, Cassidy thought.
“You’re going to be all right by yourself tonight?” Tamila rubbed Cassidy’s arms and glanced back toward the bedroom.
“Barb’s still here,” Cassidy said.
“Yeah, I’ll keep her company.” Barb stepped up and stood at Cassidy’s side. Tamila glanced back and forth between them, then nodded once, as if she’d made some kind of decision.
“You do that, Barb,” Tamila said. “You take good care of Cassidy for me.”
“I will.” Barb put an arm around Cassidy’s waist.
Cassidy watched the four of them depart, and then she closed the door.
Tamila called later from the hospital. She was distant, almost businesslike, as she reported that Reese had scattered first-degree burns on her body and had lost her eye. Tamila, a bright girl with a future to protect, had concocted a story that would hopefully stave off any police investigation.
Tamila had claimed that Reese was high on drugs and ranting about demons, which fit very well with the fact that Reese had begun screaming about demons when she’d reached the hospital, then attacked the hospital staff when they clearly didn’t believe her. Tamila had told the doctors that Reese’s wound was self-inflicted. They had sedated Reese, who later claimed to remember nothing.
That was it. Cassidy and Tamila hardly spoke at all for the rest of high school, their lives moving in very distant directions from each other. Cassidy would spend her adolescence focused on boys, drugs, and her part-time job at the art supply store by the mall, barely squeaking through her classes (except art and literature, where she made A’s). Tamila graduated as class valedictorian with a pile of full-ride scholarship offers from top schools around the country.
Reese wore a black eyepatch for the rest of high school, earning her a number of pirate-themed nicknames she obviously despised. She was never seen again at any parties, and she also dropped out of the Drama Club, where she’d often played lead roles in school plays. She turned her focus to school and began attending a church, where she spent most of her time. She shed her trademark nose ring and skimpy slutwear, trading them for conservative dresses and full-length pants. Reese transformed herself from one of the school’s leading juvenile delinquents, and certainly its flashiest, into a very quiet religious girl in a plain brown wrapper.
Cassidy assumed that Reese’s turn to religion was an understandable response to her apparent demonic possession. She couldn’t know for sure, because Reese ignored her and refused to speak with her. That was exactly how Reese treated most people at school after the night of the party, the night of Nibhaz. Cassidy later heard she’d gone off to some obscure religious college in Kentucky or Oklahoma after graduation.
As for Barb—Barb stuck with Cassidy, and they only grew closer over the years, through an adolescence filled with drugs, boys, parties, concerts, sneaking out, and getting picked up by the police more than once. They barely limped across the finish line of high school together, but they were young, and they felt ready to move out and face the world together.
Chapter Two
Big Ted wanted an “evil-looking cat with a pirate patch” on his right arm, just above the elbow, between the fanged moon wearing sunglasses and the flaming clock. If there was some overall theme or pattern to Big Ted’s tattoos, Cassidy had not yet discovered it, though she’d inked three of them herself.
The tattoo machine buzzed in her hand as she injected blue ink into his arm. Cassidy had already drawn the outline in black, and now she was moving in for the fill.
“Is that robin’s-egg blue?” Big Ted craned his neck over his shoulder. He was a hairy, beefy man in his fifties with a thick salt-and-pepper mustache, his chest flab lying on his bare stomach like big-nippled boobs as he sat shirtless in the chair. “I wanted robin’s-egg blue.”
“It’s the same hue you picked out,” Cassidy said.
“I can’t see it real good from here.”
“Check it.” Cassidy held up a hand mirror so he cou
ld look. Big Ted squinted at the stripe of blue she’d just added to the cat, and he rubbed his grizzled chin thoughtfully.
While Big Ted might have lacked any sense of theme or order to his tattoos, he was an enthusiastic collector of them. His back was a madman’s mural featuring thuggish cartoon animals, a tree that grew thorny vines instead of leaves or fruit, a gravestone with his mother’s name, a bottle of Jim Beam, and a big red-white-and-blue American eagle driving a Harley-Davidson with its talons, its patriotic wings splayed wide above the motorcycle.
“Cassidy!” a man’s voice shouted from the back. “Your mom’s on the phone. Again.”
“I’m tattooing, Jarvis!” Cassidy called back.
“I told her that. Again.” Jarvis walked out of the back holding out a cordless phone. He was the manager, a short guy in his mid-forties who was furiously resisting his age with lots of hair gel and stupid hipster glasses. He wore a tank top to show off his stringy vegan jogger’s body and his full-sleeve tattoos. Jarvis favored weird marine life, and his wrists and forearms were sheathed in suckers and spiny teeth. He adjusted his glasses for no apparent reason and glared at Cassidy. “I’ve told you, I don’t want that crazy bitch calling here.”
“Don’t call my mom a crazy bitch! You fuckhead!”
“You call her a crazy bitch all the time,” Jarvis said as she took the phone from him.
“Cassidy? Hello?” her mother’s voice crackled.
“That’s not the point! You realize she could hear you say that?” Cassidy waved the phone at him.
“Nah, I put it on mute. Right?” He frowned and squinted at the phone.
“Go back to your video game, Jarvis.” Cassidy held the phone to her ear. “Mom?”
“There you are, Cassidy,” her mother said. “Do you know he told me you were too busy to talk to me?”
“I have a client sitting right here.” Cassidy offered Big Ted an apologetic smile. “What’s the emergency?”
“I’m making boiled beef,” she said. “You should come home for dinner tonight. We haven’t seen you in months.”