Demon Inhibitions: Caitlin Diggs Series #3

by Gary Starta

  What was I thinking? My reason shouted at me, as it drowned in a tidal wave of emotion. My neurons were on overload, my vagina flooded with the promise of sensuous lovemaking.

  My mind couldn’t stop me. I had fallen under his spell. He entered me and I screamed as if I just touched a burning flame, but this pronouncement had nothing to do with getting burned--or so my pleasure center thought--because my rational mind told me I was being led down the path to hell. But my flesh couldn’t feel the pain, the damnation. It only tingled with pleasurable sensations. He was the warm wind on a sandy beach, or the subsiding ache of a soul who has finally found her kindred spirit. I couldn’t tell anymore, I only knew that I could not imagine existence without these wondrous feelings. If this was the devil, I had bartered with him and made a pact.

  And then… a vision of the crystal popped into my head.

  I heard screams from afar. It sounded like Briana. She was talking to someone. Their voices were panicky, because they couldn’t find a way into my world. At least that’s what I thought I heard. The voices were no louder than mice, tiny, and far, far, far away from the ultimate Disneyland ride I was experiencing. And then, just like Space Mountain, my stomach felt like it dropped into a bottomless pit of space. I remembered what the crystal had been capable of. It had sucked the life out of people. It had drained them, until their brains ruptured. The demon plunging himself inside of me was no better than the evil crystal. I was about to become victim number six. Funny how that number and the devil seem to keep making acquaintance. But there was nothing funny about my predicament. To say I was conflicted would have been the understatement of the millennium. God, I loved the feelings he aroused in me, the depths he could go to push my clouded brain to the heights of ecstasy! Why would I want this to stop?

  I heard a cat growl. It reminded me it had to stop.

  The luscious demon boy on top of me whipped his head around and bared a fang.

  The room began to bend into funny angles. It toppled us sideways. My fingernails dug into the demon’s backside for purchase. He screamed, but not out of pain. He screamed because something defying the laws of dimensional space was taking place, altering the very makeup of the dream world, and allowing a creature from the waking world to breach its hallowed mind theater. A physical anomaly had entered the room. It wasn’t Briana. It was too small and too furry. The snowball like creature tumbled like a ball, ricocheting off a wall, knocking itself into the defiant face of the man who refused to stop riding me.

  Were my eyes deceiving me?

  I squinted, as he continued to plunder me, spiritually and physically.

  I stared at an image of two cats. Both looked like Celeste; but one was not from this dream world. I could only fathom that the ricocheting ball of thunder now swatting itself against my demon love machine was my Celeste, my precious Tonk from the waking world. How had she entered this realm? I could only guess it had something to do with the day she accidentally scratched me. Her contact with my blood, in combination with Manners’s handkerchief, may have allowed her to walk between two worlds. I had a choice. I could continue and experience the greatest orgasm known to womankind. Or I could try to save my life. The flying fur ball clearly wasn’t waiting for my answer. The other Tonk sat dreamlike in a corner as if she was in the same kind of trance the demon had lulled me into. Celeste! I screamed from within. Please, please save me... because I… cannot…

  Rape… Rape. I’m being raped…! My mind said.

  More...more…give me more…! My body said.

  The cat pounced off the wall above me, using one paw to catapult it in the direction of the demon’s face. The demon snarled as Celeste began wrapping herself around the boy’s horn.

  She began tugging at the appendage, removing the demon’s ability to peer into my eyes. His grip on me loosened, I could still feel him thrashing inside of me but it wasn’t half as pleasurable as a minute before. It fact it felt kind of ordinary. That’s how he must have seduced me, with his gaze. Celeste continued to tug at the horn. My body buckled underneath the demon, my legs fought to pry myself away from his main attraction. I still wasn’t free from his touch, although most of him had slid out of me like a recoiling snake. The image suddenly made me nauseous. A wave of sickness welled in the back of my throat. I opened my mouth and green slime poured out of me in volcanic proportions. My body rocked back and forth, until I found a sitting position. I now stared right into his demon face with Celeste dangling off his bloodied horn like a bull rider at a rodeo. She hung on until I unleashed the most torrential wave of vomit known to humankind. Celeste leaped for cover. The demon’s eyes filled with red and green liquid. He had no choice but to devote both hands in defense of his stinging eyes. When he did, I smacked him upside his head, interlocking my hands so his cranium took the full brunt of force I could muster using two mortal arms. When I had him off of me, I stood upon the bed and kicked him in the chest. He rolled off. My dream date had ended…

  I found myself lying in the cot, soaked in sweat. Thankfully I was clothed. And in a scene reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz, I found myself in the company of a witch, an incubus and a loving cat. They huddled around my bed with an urgent look about their faces as if they feared I was dead.

  “I’m not… I’m not dead…” It was all I could manage to say.

  “No, Caitlin. You’re not dead.” Briana laughed in response.

  She pointed to the corner of the room. There in the confines of a cage, stood my lover boy, but he had no horn, he was fully clothed and not a speck of blood or vomit graced his ever-loving god like body. His face told me we had been together. We had made love, but in another dimension, one that is kept hidden deep in the gray matter of our brains.

  “How did he get here?” I nearly drooled on myself. He had drained every ounce of energy from me. My lips could barely move and I sounded like a patient coming out of anesthesia.

  “He made the mistake of physically appearing at the scene of the crime,” Manners chided. He sounded like his father.

  Briana must have heard me. “That’s because he is.”

  Manners explained he had a child with Briana nineteen years ago. He thought it was best to have his half human, half incubus boy grow up in a normal household. But Gabriel wholeheartedly disagreed. He rattled the cage with his fists.

  “How could I grow up as a normal human when I’m not one?” he cried in defiance. He had lost the Shakespearian inflection. Good thing, I thought because this boy seriously looked like he was about to pull a Hamlet if given half a chance.

  Sure enough Gabriel proved me right.

  “I could kill you,” he said to his father.

  “I could love you,” the judge retorted to his caged son.

  “Then why did you do this to me? Did you honestly think I could suppress my demon nature? Well, I didn’t, Dad. The urges were there, so I went primal on all those lovely realtors. I figured I get a little payback. You would be framed for all the murders and finally get your due. But to my chagrin, the damn penal system let you walk away, Scot free.”

  I sat up, startled by his sick revelation. “Gabriel! You raped and killed your own sister!”

  Gabriel spat on the floor. “Half sister.”

  “Did your sister reveal who your father was?”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “So you repaid her by killing her?”

  “It was the only way to get Dad back. Given the opportunity, I would do it again.”

  Manners intervened. “And we can’t give you the opportunity to do it again.”

  “I know, Manners,” I said. But he shook his head.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Ms. Diggs. You think you’re going to take him into custody and try him for these murders, let him stand before the very prosecutors who could not have imprisoned me, simply because they lacked forensic evidence.”

  “And you suggest…”

  “I don’t suggest. I will take the boy to a place where he’s properly punished for
his sins.”

  I wondered what in the world he was talking about.

  “You’re not from Scotland, I take it.”

  “No.” Manners smiled. “I’m not from Scotland.”

  I asked Briana why she’d lied to me.

  She looked at Gabriel her caged son, and a tear spilled onto her cheek. Because if I didn’t entrap Gabriel, he would have killed me as well; he chose to kill you Caitlin because you betrayed him. But he would have come after me if he had known I was his biological mother. I did not use a protection spell on you, Caitlin. I simply suppressed your visions. But in a day or so, you will be back to normal.”

  “Will you reconsider…?” The words barely left my mouth when a noxious gas flooded the room. I stumbled to me feet, scooping Celeste into my arms, and ran towards the kitchen, coughing. When the smoke cleared I came back to find the room empty. Briana, Manners and his caged son had vanished into thin air.

  I could only figure the cage was some kind of teleportation device.

  ~ * ~

  Three weeks passed with no sign of Briana, Manners or Gabriel. I could only tell the police that my sting operation was a bust.

  “I guess I spooked Manners.”

  Chief Elsevier concurred with a nasty grimace. “I guess you did. Well, you might have saved some lives.” He ended the sentence with a grunt.

  “That doesn’t mean he’s guilty, Chief.”

  “What?”

  “Because he ran; that doesn’t prove anything.”

  “And who’s going to believe that?”

  “Civilized folks will. Remember this isn’t the 17th century and not every witch is the devil.”

  He snarled at me. “I’ll remember. Good day, Ms. Diggs.”

  I left the station realizing my career in law enforcement would never completely fade into the distance. I could distance myself from cops and FBI agents all I wanted, but at the end of the day, when you dissected my makeup, my DNA would tell you I was a cop at heart. And like Manners, I had learned the past often reappears like a boomerang, jolting you out of the present and forcing you to reexamine your future. Manners believed he had done his son a favor by shielding him from his devilish lifestyle, but in reality he only tormented the boy who could not deny his makeup.

  Realtors often revere location as if it’s a holy grail. Well, for the sake of Manners and his son, I can only hope they both find a place free from the nagging conscience of guilt and a riddled past. But my gut instinct tells me no such place exists--unless you find a way to escape the trappings of your own mind.

  I spent the next few days musing, wondering how to deal with my past. Could I--or should I--forget my FBI past? Celeste kept close proximity during my daydreams, as if she desired to assist me. Time seemed a luxury until I got an urgent call from an old friend, a detective from Boston.

  Five

  That morning started out the same as any other during the course of the past weeks. Email and voicemail offered no prospects of work. The sun beat down oppressively on my front porch, keeping me safely on the confines of my living room couch, next to the AC. Celeste still played hopscotch on the last few remaining boxes I had yet to unpack.

  The only thing noticeably difference in this morning had been a persistent scratchiness at the back of my throat. It felt raw and germ filled as if someone were wringing out a dirty washcloth back there. I gargled with some water and drank two cups of scalding hot tea to no avail. Looks like I had caught the dreaded summer cold. And as I tried to remedy this, I could hear my sister Tara’s voice in my clouded head as I raided my newly stocked medicine cabinet. Try a holistic cure for goddess sakes…

  I should have. I really should have. Because after I managed to break the safety seal from the bottle filled with a murky dark green liquid and take one sip, the room begin to slightly spin and I felt my knees buckle. I attempted a short sprint to the couch but never made it. When I awoke I found myself lying facedown on the floor with Celeste licking my right cheek. I had been paralyzed for a few moments I gathered, glancing at the time and temperature posted on the cable news station. My TV, not more than five feet in front of me, told me some urgent matter had been playing out during those moments I had spent getting to know the texture of my very hard wood floor. Voices were raised with excitation. I jokingly thought they might be reacting to my huddled mass on the floor before them. Yes, a joke at a time of this; kind of gives my brain a nanosecond of time to accept the shitty reality of things. Well, fortunately, I had the lack of fashion sense not to wear anything that might have been harmed in the fall. My oversized floppy T-shirt and blue jean cutoffs stood up quite well to my ungracious belly flop. As I struggled to right myself, daring only to balance myself on my knees, I noticed a slight tingle in my palms. Time to access damage: My palms were red and rough, but not cut. Now for the scary part: Accessing my mental condition. I hadn’t had a vision since Brianna worked her mojo on me a few weeks back. And because I felt I had been coming down with a cold I really hadn’t thought to equate my fainting spell with anything psychic. Yet, as I rested there on my knees, Celeste running circles around me, ducking her head like a bull in a rodeo, begging for caresses, I began to recall exactly what transpired.

  I had been fully conscious and awake. My eyes were open during the episode in fact, yet I did not really see, at least not anything happening in my living room. My hearing had also been quite attuned to what I would describe as a waking dream. Or maybe, what I experienced had been a real waking vision. If so, this had been my first. As I struggled to recall more, the pounding at the back of my head began to subside. And now I recalled. A blinding, searing pain; a shard of white light had been responsible for making my knees buckle. And I really didn’t think the cold medicine or a cold itself had been responsible. I know Tara would have blamed the murky green liquid. It had been the brand that had become famous with the catchy tag line a few years back. I think it went something like: the nighttime sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever so you can rest medicine; only if this were so I would have replaced the last line as: “so you can have a horrendously painful clairvoyant journey medicine.”

  Fearing to stand, I slid myself along my shiny new floor to my new best friend: the couch. As soon as I made my way on it, Celeste made her way onto me, resting comfortably in stable condition upon my chest.

  “Okay, Celeste, so what just happened here?” I asked her, but her eyes gave no epiphany, only an accusing glare, one that I felt bore into me many times before on the occasions I had slept late and failed to provide her with a morning salmon fix.

  As I listened to the broadcast, my head cocked off to one side not daring to look at the light of the TV screen, I heard a name, Aldo Mollini. It was a name that had haunted my good detective friend Stanford Carter over the last few years and for good reason. A murderous building contractor--capable of luring his victims into a hypnotic trance--had been supposedly responsible for many false suicides in the area. Mollini would contract a house for work and begin working occult magic on the unsuspecting couple, eventually driving them mad with telepathic chants. Before they knew it, they were committing suicide and giving Mollini their souls as payment along with a hefty contractor deposit fee. Carter fought to prosecute Mollini on these grounds with little forensic evidence to prove the contractor’s evilness. Yet Celeste--then owned by a couple targeted as Mollini’s latest victims--managed to tape Mollini’s chants via an answering machine, placing him in the house as the wife began to OD on pills. The tape argued to be admissible as evidence by one of Boston’s top psychiatrists had been responsible for putting the deranged building contractor/soul stealer in the Cedar Junction correctional facility. Well, at least until this morning I gathered. Stunned and disgusted, I listened to the announcer and a running ticker tape on the bottom of the screen confirmed the nightmare. Mollini had escaped, and in doing so had left a lot of dead prison guards in his wake.

  Caution... The announcer implored citizens--police would call
them civilians--to use caution and not attempt to approach the fugitive. They should simply call nine-one-one. I knew of no telecommunications device or conventional weapon which could ward off Mollini’s brand of evil. Calling nine-one-one wasn’t caution, it was downright suicide. Making the situation all the more absurd was the fact that police and the press were nearly incapable of classifying Mollini’s evil powers as paranormal. They simply called him a dangerous individual. Dangerous is an understatement. Mollini, running under a full head of black magic steam, would probably be quite capable of convincing his attackers to turn their weapons upon themselves. Still, I couldn’t afford to indulge in the horror of the moment or my anger at the police and media.

  I closed my eyes tight, forcing myself to replay the vision. And in a few seconds, I could see it play out before me in my mind’s eye. It started out quite tranquil, “even lovely” as my late aunt would have said. I could see the beautiful, quaint New Jersey town of Cranbury. Tara and I had taken a road trip to the area when I had been house hunting. I had originally considered setting up my PI practice there, but Tara disapproved, noting the beautifully manicured lawns and lush botanical vegetation was only a hop, skip and a stone’s throw away from the polluted stinking portion of the New Jersey Turnpike. So if this were a vision, it had started out quite user friendly, providing me with some navigational points of reference. But soon the vision became ugly, and it had nothing to do with riding the stinking, infested toll road called the turnpike. I saw other landmarks including a bridge. Route 35. A sign: Dock Street. The town itself, posted on a sign: Welcome to Matawan.

  So would I be in for more sightseeing? I hadn’t detoured to this area during my house hunt. I did recall the town’s name on map quest. Located in a northeasterly direction from Cranbury, I recalled Matawan as only another pleasant gateway to the Jersey shore. And as I dissected the vision more and more, I recalled something startling. Something I remembered sent my breathing into panic mode. It had been a shark, maybe a great white or perhaps a bull. I’m no marine biologist, but I knew it was the kind of shark capable of inflicting great physical harm on both the human form and the human psyche. Great... Just what I needed, another version of the bogeyman, but this time he came replete with fins, coal like obsidian eyes and a huge overbite. I recalled the shark jumping through something. Hurtling itself through the ring, only the ring had no substance to it, just a faint blue outline. And when the shark had finished performing its Sea World routine, I saw the man, standing there, smug, defiant, black hearted. Aldo Mollini. He stood on one side of what appeared to be a creek. A heavy cropping of bush and trees surrounded him along with the ever-present faint blue outline of a huge ring, probably equal to the circumference of a human being with his arms and legs fully extended. He seemed to be baiting me. He seemed to know one thing. I would do almost anything to assist my good friend, Detective Carter. He was correct. I would be compelled to do something. I knew it. This was not just a dream of the future, but of my fate. And then I recalled the sudden plume of blue and white waves that began to froth and charge, warning me I had to act fast. Yet, reflecting on my couch, I had to pause and wonder about them. Waves… But they weren’t waves in a tangible sense. They were waves without substance, without water, they were ethereal, air filled, rippling like a wind you could somehow see. I strangely recalled a lesson in high school about infra-red light. Maybe this ring existed in an invisible color spectrum, invisible to the naked eye, yet when it began to open, much like the aperture of a camera lens, perhaps its light suddenly become visible. In any event, I would bet with all my heart and soul that Mollini would utilize this ring to escape me. Much like the shark had seemingly disappeared into thin air only moments before.