The Demon of Montreal

by A. Michael Schwarz

  What had appeared as a rough-shod and dead-end wall of earth and broken concrete was suddenly a bank of quivering, stringy muscle that filled the full circumference of the tunnel. Then the limbs unfolded slowly and she saw the form.

  Knees like giant pumpkins folded to an oversized chest. The ladder-esque spine curved along the slope of the tunnel, supporting an oblong and too-heavy head. Long fingered hands curled at the ends of slack-muscled arms. Crippled feet rested against the base of the tunnel, where wall met floor, jittering curled toe-nails against concrete.

  A monster? Worse.

  She could not draw her unblinking eyes from the spectacle before her. Her ocular nerves soaked up the contours and surfaces of this abstruse and bizarre form, showing details that had at first eluded her.

  On closer view, each part of the thing consisted of smaller like-parts, cells of a larger organism. Its knees were constructed of many smaller knees. Its fingers, a molded assembly of many smaller fingers, one hulking body pieced and pressed together with many lesser bodies.

  The thing moved its head in a motion that bespoke fragility and pain. And then she saw Them.

  The horrible face that purported no semblance to anything living or dead, human or otherwise consisted of hundreds of…eyes. A patchwork of staring, blinking eyes, grafted wherever they may. No nose, no ears, no mouth, just scores and scores of eyes. Some too close, others too far apart.

  The demon snapped his fingers and the beast returned to its fetal position inside the tunnel.

  “Wh…what the fuck?” she managed to say.

  “The Thousand-Eyed Thing,” he said. “Berthed here in its tunnel-womb, where it waits for the end.”

  Her stomach went from sour to sick and her shoes caught the brunt of it.

  Chapter Seven

  The demon allowed Abby some time to clean up and showed her to a wet shaft where fresh water still flowed in directly from the Saint Lawrence River. He pressed a gnarled lump into the palm of her hand and said, “You’ll probably need this.” Then disappeared, leaving Abby in the solid dark, alone.

  Abby wasn’t the type to complain. She could make do in most situations and recognized the sweet scent of beeswax in her hand. She fished in her pocket for her cigarette lighter and lit the candle stub the demon had given her. The flame was small, but soon caught, bathing the sewer in yellow light.

  She removed her sweatshirt and socks. Then slipped her feet back into her soiled shoes and stepped into the water. Water soaked through her tennis shoes and quickly turned her feet numb.

  She sloshed over to the snub of an iron pipe protruding from the brick interior of the tunnel, cleaning her shoes in the process. Clear, cold water trickled out of the pipe and down the red-brick wall in a slimy path. She placed her shirt under it and worked out the bile.

  The shirt clean, she laid it over her shoulder and shoved her socks under the trickle. She shivered, her skin turning to gooseflesh.

  The task was only nominally effective and less so with the socks, using cold water and no soap, but it would have to do. She opted not to wash her bra, mainly because she needed to wear something while her clothes dried.

  When she’d finished, she left the narrow, wet shaft and walked back to the dry tunnel system where the demon spent his time. Her shoes squelched as she walked and she shivered, making the candle light flicker. Abby walked slowly so as not to extinguish the flame.

  She arrived back at the demon’s lair—she thought of it as a lair, in truth it was a crude apartment not unlike her own. A small wooden table in the middle of the room held a dozen or so beeswax candles, scattered across its surface. Evidently, this was a form of the demon’s hospitality, though she tried not to think critically of it, for he could no more light a candle than she could extinguish one by mere presence alone.

  Having no modality for a fire place in the abandoned sewers of Montreal, she lit all the candles—thirteen by her count—and placed them in a cluster near the far wall. There, the candles sputtered and burned, emitting sufficient heat to warm her chilled skin and dry her shirt and socks. She hung them in uneven and natural niches in the wall above them. Warmer now, she ventured a look around her.

  The cell was jammed with all kinds of books—large, small, leather, paper. Abby spotted some classic titles amongst the more obscure ones. Many had Latin and French titles, some had no titles at all. They stood neatly between variegated bookends. She stood, amazed at the clinical precision practiced with their order. Each book was carefully and deliberately placed in alphabetical order. Abby ran a finger over one leather-back without so much as a trace of dust.

  Other than the books, a small, austere table sat in the center of the room between two iron-backed chairs. A stuffing-spilling sofa lined one portion of one wall while a dilapidated armchair sat crookedly in the opposite corner.

  One other thing, perhaps the whole reason for the room, caught Abby’s attention and held it. Measuring the height of a wall and wider than two arm lengths, stood a composition of hundreds of brass fittings and sprockets. Gleaming and glinting in the candle light, ticking in tiny movements, stood a magnificent piece of clockwork.

  Abby stared at it, transfixed. Each minute piece moved in concert with the other, the hands slowly ticking over to the next tiny increment. It had no face, this clock, just a mesh of dials and wheels, and endlessly moving levers and plates.

  She felt the rhythm of the clock, like a heartbeat, a pulse, the constant tick of the soul of the world. Since when had this clock begun? A little image of the demon coming every night to wind it flashed in her mind, but she knew this was not how it was done. Somehow she knew this clock had ticked without interruption since it was first set in motion. She knew it because that’s how it looked. No face. No art design, just the internal works that gleamed and ticked in one long song.

  “Feel that? It’s like life.”

  Abby bit the tip of her tongue as the candle light vanished. “Yes,” she said. “Like a heartbeat.”

  He stepped closer to her, but not so near that she could object.

  “But to what?”

  “To an age,” he said. “It’s counting down.”

  She rounded on him suddenly and stared into the neon blue of his aura. She held her arms over her breasts before realizing she still wore her bra.

  “What’s this all about?” she asked. “What is that creature down there? And what are you doing here?”

  He hung his head. Stared at the floor through colorless goggles. “Men do not know when their minds have been…high-jacked. They cannot distinguish between their own dreams and those of another…consciousness.

  “There exists a kind of darkness that can never be pierced by the light. Man can fall into this darkness. Men used to see far. They used to see the ‘other side.’ Not so anymore. They have lost the organ for such vision. I don’t know why, but I believe disuse.

  Man can, therefore, fall so fast and so complete that he will, at last, be totally consumed. He will be a slave then, more so than ever he was in his past. At first a slave to an alien darkness, but that’s just the first part of the trick. He will use this darkness and thus become a slave, ultimately, to his own ignorance and cruelty.”

  “So, at the end of the day, he will enslave himself?”

  He nodded. “It is this darkness we must prepare for and fight. It is brought by what some call the Leviathan. Others, the Taninim. Victory over it will give mankind another chance. A little more time.”

  “Time for what?”

  He shrugged. “Not for me to decide.”

  She thought for a moment. “Leviathan. You mean sea monsters?”

  “That depends on your interpretation.”

  “Right. And so…we’re preparing for—”

  “The end. That’s all I know.”

  “The end of what? The w
orld?”

  “Ends are peculiar,” he said. “They mark the death of one thing and the birth of another. I am no expert in this, just a tool. What I just told you is all I know. It’s what I have managed to put together with these…books. It’s my theory. I could be wrong.”

  “And you protect against this…darkness?”

  He shook his head. “No. I make the Thing in the tunnel and I built the clock to tell me when I’ve run out of time. I must make the beast before the clock stops ticking. It’s a race.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t get it.”

  “You don’t have to, but I am running out of time. The ticking is slower now. The clock is running down. Time is relative. This clock does not ‘tell time.’ It measures the completion of the Thing and therefore…the end.”

  She sighed and repressed an impulse to laugh or cry. “I thought you didn’t live down here,” she said, trying her hand at small talk and gesturing to the couch beside her. She fumbled for her cigarettes in the pocket of her jeans.

  “To say I live anywhere would be a mistake. I do not live. But if you asked where I stay, you could say here.”

  She shifted her weight and crossed her arms. Trying to light a cigarette, she remembered the impossibility of it and put it back in the pack. “Do you always talk in riddles,” she asked. “Double meanings and unspoken intentions?”

  “Again, I apologize. I don’t ordinarily talk because I don’t usually have company. You are the first…in a very long…while.” Then as if suddenly reminded of some pressing engagement he said, “I’m sorry, I have kept you too long. I must go above ground now.”

  “Then I’ll wait here till you come back.”

  He gestured for her to follow him, shaking his head. “No. You must go back to your world, your life. Your decision has changed your destiny. You will return and forget this place, forget the monster that grows in the tunnel and you will forget, above all, about me.”

  Her lips pressed together in a bloodless grimace. She wondered if he possessed some neat little way of wiping her memory once she left the sewers. “I’m staying.”

  He stood unmoved by her defiance. “You will return and forget. Besides, you are cold, your clothes are wet and you are hungry. I don’t want you…catching cold.”

  “I have cigarettes. Candles.”

  He stepped toward her, a sigh on his lips. “You can no more stay down here, than I can stay up there. The worlds…don’t allow it.”

  “Fuck the worlds.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “I’m sorry too.” Her throat constricted around the words as she spoke through tears. Desperation and the need to belong threatened to crush her chest. “I don’t have…anything up there for me, and you know that. I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to live either. So, I’m a stranger there too.” She wiped at her eyes. “You’re kicking me out of here? Then I’ll just call you back in a couple of days…a week…a month when my darkness pulls me under…and we’ll be having this same stupid fucking conversation all over again. I don’t have anywhere else to go. Okay? Can’t you understand that? Besides, if there’s some fucked up sea monster going to sack this place and your big ass wall clock is running down, then you need my help anyway. Right? Please say something.”

  He clenched his fists, his jaw. The beauty of his features seemed to heighten the more time she spent with him. Like the creature in the tunnel, the more she observed the more detail she saw. The shadows that composed his body appeared more and more solid, opaque, flesh-like even. His facial features and expressions portrayed the perfect replica of the human image. It seemed that the cells of his body had been created, or turned, into something other than flesh and blood, but held the form nonetheless.

  “I cast you out not as a rejection,” he said, “but in consideration for you.”

  “Then reconsider.” This time she stepped toward him. It seemed the room shrank as she took a spot no more than half a meter from him. She felt his chill, a cold she knew she could warm. “Because I’m alone too.” Her voice was a barely audible whisper. “I can help you in whatever it is you do.” She wanted to beg, to throw herself at his feet, wrap her arms around his legs and beg.

  He reached for her, a finger lifting the tears from her cheeks, sending a chill through her. “Sweet, sweet girl,” he said. “You don’t know what it is that you ask for.”

  She looked up to meet his gaze, an eyeless stare behind colorless goggles.

  “Then show me.”

  Part Two

  The Making of a Demon

  Chapter Eight

  Trisha Winston loved her sister. It was hard to express it though, not because Trisha couldn’t easily convey the sentiment, but because Abby wouldn’t accept it.

  Trisha and Abby were opposites. This was undisputable. It began in childhood with choice of interests. Trisha loved sports. Abby loathed them. Abby gravitated toward writing poetry and music. Trisha never could appreciate Whitman or Keats. It manifested in style of dress with Trisha insisting on all the latest trends and designer brands, and Abby having a partiality only to the color black regardless of the label.

  By late teens the split had become as solid as genetic coding with Abby a devout Goth and Trisha a literal prom queen.

  It continued into adulthood when the manifestation took a more sinister turn. No longer to do with dress and after school activities, it had become one of attitude and emotional well-being. Abby was always somewhat more depressive, but in the last three years it had plummeted to new depths.

  So Trisha worried about her twin sister and wanted—needed—to reach out and make a connection, because more than anything Trisha felt guilty. Guilty that she hadn’t done anything about it earlier. Guilty that she allowed—no, purposely made them drift apart. Twins? Nothing could have been more paradoxical. Yin and Yang more like.

  Trisha knew that losing Steven had been hard on Abby. She could see the emotional pockmarks as if they were physical blemishes. And now, especially after last week’s dinner, she needed to do something, take action, anything to ameliorate this feeling of overwhelming and unrelenting guilt.

  She drove to Abby’s apartment. Drove unannounced because she’d never let her come over, drove now because she felt something was going to happen…or already had.

  The common hallways smelled like stale cigarette smoke and fresh paint. Two scents Trisha hated. Cigarette smoke made her want to gag and fresh paint made her want to pass out. The combination seemed lethal. She forced herself through it because her sister needed her, right now, she told herself.

  The apartment door was locked and no amount of knocking made Abby open it, but Trisha could hear the television blaring and fancied she heard running water from some internal pipe, so believed her sister was home. She knew her sister too well. She knew the lengths of despair Abby was capable of.

  “Come on Abb, open up. I know you’re in there.”

  What to do about the locked door? She could leave and come back some other time, or for God’s sakes call first. But somehow that didn’t seem the wise thing to do. Somehow the moment became urgent. Here in the dimly lit hallway, gagging on smoke and paint fumes, a niggling feeling told Trisha otherwise. Abby would thank her later, she was certain.

  Coming in, she’d seen a sign that said: Landlord Unit A. Trisha looked at her watch—nearly eleven o’clock—late…but not too late for an emergency. Trisha may have gotten all the jock proclivities, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t play act when she needed to. She bent over and shook out her raven black hair—hair she prided herself on—and in a series of hand movements she would never otherwise make, mussed it up something fierce.

  The next part wouldn’t be as easy, mainly because she didn’t have a sink to wash in, but from her purse she pulled a McDonald’s napkin and wiped, with a little dab of spit, at the makeup on her face. Wipe
d it good and clean so that two blemishes actually showed through. Then she untucked her shirt, buttoned her top buttons to hide her assets and looked at herself in the glass of the fire extinguisher cabinet.

  Not bad. Not bad at all. She ratcheted her voice an octave lower and said, “I’m Abby Winston.”

  The landlord, frizzy-haired and bath-robed did not appreciate the knock on the door at eleven o’clock at night, but his ill-humored expression softened at the sight the brunette in front of him. She had that way with people, had always had that way. Even in her impersonation of Abby, she could melt cold exteriors. It was partly why she could afford to be fearless. In some ways.

  She took the key from his fingers as if picking a flower, gentle and sweet. He’d never even asked her name.

  The door opened with a waft of stale smoke. Something annoying played on the television and the bathroom light and fan had been left on. Trisha’s eye darted to the three items on the bed and the hand written letter beside them.

  “Oh…Abby.” Her voice sounded like her mother’s in that moment, disappointed and pathetic. Trisha hated the sound of it. She felt tears crowd her eyes as she went to the bed and touched the dull side of the razor with a fingertip. “Oh God.”

  She picked up the letter. Printed neatly on plain paper it read:

  To whoever may find this,

  Please understand that I have gone to a better place. One where I hope my darkness and despair will be obliterated by light.

  Yours truly and forever, A. W.

  Trisha took a breath and raised an eyebrow. Short and sweet, impersonal even. No date. Totally like Abby, if she were blowing someone off, or in a hurry.

  The thought of Abby in the apartment, already dead, hanging in the closet by an ad hoc noose, disquieted her. Her stomach turned sour. Stale smoke cloyed in her throat.

  Ah, where might that be, Trish?

  The apartment was little more than a closet itself with a kitchenette and bathroom. Her reasonable mind took control as she spotted the only clothes closet open and almost empty.