The Demon Stone

by Christopher Datta

  Liz heard nothing and saw nothing except for those eyes set on both sides of its long snout and black, hairless nose. Her focus tunneled ahead, her peripheral vision dissolving, seeing only those features. She didn’t know if she was screaming, she was so consumed by fear. Never before in her life had she been face-to-face with such raw and unrestrained animal strength, or felt so vulnerable.

  Its eyes stared directly into hers, gauging her by a feral intelligence completely beyond her experience. She would later reflect that it was the same intense scrutiny that she herself might give to a small but annoying bug before deciding whether to squash it or simply bat it away.

  And then she saw a decision in its eyes. They narrowed, the brows furrowing and the mouth dropping open. The lips pulled back over a set of long and very sharp teeth, the white enamel stained bloody red with raspberry juice. The bear snarled, rising up onto its back legs, and for the first time Liz noticed the glistening black claws that extended well beyond the ends of the toes on its front paws.

  Her paralysis released her and she scooted crab-like on her back away from the towering animal. She knew she was about to die. She must have been screaming because she later found that her throat was raw and hoarse.

  Something catapulted over her, landing full against the bear. The bear’s attention shifted from Liz, giving her time to leap up and stumble backwards.

  It was Hampton. The bear fell onto all four of its legs again and took a swing at the dog. Hampton dodged the blow, pivoting to the bear’s side and away from its powerful front paws, and then he cut back behind the bear snapping at its rear legs. The bear swung around but the dog was faster and kept behind him.

  The fur on Hampton’s back stood up, his head lowered. His lips curled back in a vicious snarl, primitive and more menacing than Liz had ever imagined possible from this dog who had spent a night curled up next to her in a sleeping bag. His appearance was so altered by naked aggression that it seemed he could not be the same animal.

  Although the bear was several times his size, Hampton kept it fully engaged. Liz spun around and ran as hard as she could. Beth and Kevin appeared before her and she rushed into them. Kevin held her as she frantically turned and pointed back.

  “A bear,” she wheezed. “Hampton stopped him but the bear will kill him.”

  She looked back. To her astonishment, she saw the bear galloping away from the dog into the woods. Hampton, she was relieved to see, did not pursue but instead stood his ground barking. After a moment, satisfied that his adversary had given up the fight, he turned and trotted back to them, occasionally glancing back over his shoulder and barking to give the bear warning.

  Kevin looked her over. “You all right?”

  She nodded, breathless. “He didn’t touch me.”

  Hampton trotted up to her wagging his tail and appearing very full of himself. She stooped to give him a big hug, his head over her shoulder.

  “But I wouldn’t have been except for this damn dog. You’re a lifesaver, old boy.”

  “I doubt that,” said Kevin. “Bear attacks are almost unknown up here.”

  “Did you see it?” said Beth, angry. “That bear would have killed Liz.”

  Kevin frowned. “No, you both wandered too far down the road for me to see. I heard the screams and by the time I got here this is where I found you. But there hasn’t been a black bear attack up here in years, and even those always involved a bear cub that the mother felt was threatened.”

  “The bear reared up and was almost on her, for Christ’s sake,” snapped Beth.

  Liz saw his face flush. “These aren’t grizzly bears,” he shot back, “they’re black bears and they’re not that aggressive.”

  “So we’re liars?” said Beth.

  “No, you’re just blowing it out of proportion. You see a bear and you think it’s going to attack. I’m telling you as someone who’s spent time in these woods and seen bears plenty of times before, these animals are not dangerous unless provoked.”

  Liz stood, her own anger rising. “And I’m telling you that if it weren’t for Hampton I’d be dead. I could see into that damn animal’s eyes and he was going to maul me. I’ve never been so scared in my whole damn life!”

  Liz saw Kevin’s eyes go cold and distant. “Fine, fine,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “The bear was going to kill you. If you say so then it must be so. Hampton to the rescue. The dog chased off an aggressive killer bear ten times his size. Right. Well, all’s well that ends well, so let’s just drop it.”

  “Asshole,” muttered Beth.

  Kevin turned on her, flushed. Liz saw an anger blaze on his face that she had never seen on him before. He raised his hand and it seemed to Liz he used every last ounce of restraint in him to keep from striking the girl, something she’d never before thought he would even contemplate. It shocked her and without thinking she pulled Beth back a step.

  Kevin pointed at Beth, his hand trembling slightly. “I’ve had about as much out of you as I can take,” he said, his voice deadly low.

  “So what?” Beth hissed back.

  Kevin stepped forward and Liz wedged herself between them. “What’s the matter with you?” she said to Kevin.

  Their eyes met and once again she was looking into the alien eyes of the bear, and again she was unsure of the outcome. She’d known this man as long as anyone she called a friend, but in that instant, and for the first time, he was a stranger to her. Fear swept through her with the realization that she did not know what he was going to do. Deep in this wilderness, far from anywhere, she was with someone so charged up with fury she could smell it on him. Where was the man she had sat with last night? Where was the college student who’d been her lover?

  Abruptly, his body went limp and the color drained from his face. He frowned, shaking his head. He seemed about to speak, then shook his head again and turned away.

  Liz watched him walk down the grassy road toward where the bear had been, feeling her heart racing for the second time in the last five minutes.

  “Where are you going, Kevin?” she called.

  “You both dropped your pots,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m going to get them.”

  “What about the bear?”

  “I’ll risk it,” he said without stopping.

  “Asshole,” Beth said again under her breath, staring after him.

  Liz turned and looked at her. Tears were streaming down Beth’s cheeks. Confused, Liz pulled the girl to her. “It’s all right, sweetie,” she said. “It’s all right.” But she knew it was not all right. It was, in fact, a long way from being all right.

  Chapter 3

  Africa

  Bill was dead.

  Kevin didn’t know how long he lay there, raging and despairing over it, but sometime later the door opened. Silhouetted by the light outside of the doorway was Mosquito’s juju man. He raised a candle to look into the room, and the flickering light illuminated his intense stare.

  He hesitated only a moment before closing the door and squatting down before Kevin, carefully standing the candle between them on the floor. Kevin sat up and they gazed at each other in silence as the shaman’s grizzled old eyes studied him closely. Finally, the shaman seemed to come to a decision. He snatched up Kevin’s right hand and placed something into it. He held his wrist tightly, more tightly than Kevin had thought a man of his age could manage, pressing the object into his palm with his other hand.

  “Agbado, he choose you,” he said. “I be de servant of Agbado. He say give you dis keystone.”

  He released Kevin’s hand. In it was the pouch Mosquito had worn around his neck. He could feel that inside the pouch was something heavy and hard.

  “Keep de stone. Never let go. Agbado serve you like I serve Agbado. He keep you safe.”

  “Who is Agbado?” Kevin asked.

  “De demon. He serve Mosquito but now he choose you. Agbado know you come from de far place. Take ’em der. He want go. It be why he choose you. Keep de keyston
e and Agbado he keep you safe.” He reached out and touched Kevin’s chest with a boney finger. “He serve you now. De keystone strong juju. Agbado, he be damn powerful demon.”

  The pouch felt warm in Kevin’s hand, very warm. Strangely, the despair began to ebb from him, replaced by a building sense of control. His arm felt almost as though it were vibrating from the intensity of it.

  The old man released Kevin’s arm. Still looking into his eyes, he smiled. Not a kind smile, but a knowing smile. “You feel him,” he hissed.

  “I don’t believe in demons,” Kevin said.

  He laughed, a high, thin chuckle, rocking on his haunches. Then he shook his head. “You got de power. Call him an’ he come. He serve you.” He peered into Kevin’s face again, grabbing his shoulder and drawing them nose to nose. He said, “But you got to keep dis wid you. De stone. Never lose or hide de stone, or he choose anodder.”

  “Why does Mosquito give it to me?” Kevin said.

  “Mosquito finished,” said the old man, slapping the floor. “De demon he choose you now. Mosquito drunk and he sleep. No problem to take de stone. Agbado tell me do it.”

  “Mosquito will kill you,” Kevin said.

  He pointed to himself. “I serve Agbado.” He pointed to Kevin, his long skinny finger pushing into his chest. “Agbado serve you.” He nodded. “He protect. You see.”

  He stood. “Wait now,” he said. “When time to go, you know. Soon soon.” He walked to the door and opened it, but paused before going, looking at Kevin again. “No forget,” he said, “keep de stone wid you. Never leave.”

  Then he was gone.

  Kevin sat on the floor clutching the pouch in his hand while gazing into the candle the old man had left behind.

  Half an hour later the compound exploded in gunfire, followed by screams and flashes of light. Something told Kevin to get up. He walked to the door, opened it and looked out. There was no one guarding him. He left the building, stepping out into the night. Soldiers lay between the buildings, shot dead. The whole camp felt like a hive of bees struck by a rock. He walked on. He knew that he should.

  He entered a courtyard and on the far side of it a door opened. Mosquito staggered through it dead drunk. In the flash of an explosion he looked up and saw Kevin. He didn’t have his sunglasses on, and his eyes glowed a dim yellow.

  At that moment, a rage like Kevin had never known before in his life exploded in his chest. He wanted to crush Mosquito. He wanted to break him, slowly, painfully, limb from limb with his bare hands until he finally snapped his neck and crushed his skull. He had killed Bill. He had humiliated Kevin. He had brought a whole country to ruin with his meaningless talk of revolution for a people he ruled by terror. These, thought Kevin, are the men who savage the world, who use power to serve their own ends and who manipulate the passions of people to their dark purposes no matter what the cost in suffering and loss. Kevin wanted him to die. He had never wanted to kill before and now he wanted it with an irresistible passion.

  Mosquito yelled something and pointed to Kevin, lurching forward. Then, from between two of the buildings on his right, gunfire flashed. It was an ambush. The bullets tore through Mosquito and his head shattered like a pumpkin. His body stood a moment, transfixed, and then dropped to the ground. Instinctively, Kevin stepped back into the shadow of the building next to him. A band of jubilant soldiers ran from their hiding place and stood around the body, shouting and firing into the air and down into Mosquito. One of them dragged Diallo by his hair, his white suit in tatters. He cried out, holding his hands up around his head to ward off the blows of his captors. He was thrown onto his knees next to Mosquito as he begged the men not to kill him. A soldier behind him pulled a pistol from his belt and shot him twice in the back of the head at point-blank range. Kevin felt a terrible and passionate climax of hate and gratification, thrilling and yet strange and frightening for its intensity and brutality.

  Chapter 4

  Minnesota

  From the front of the canoe Liz turned to watch Kevin push them off from the shore. The boat scraped across the sand before drifting quietly out into the lake. Kevin hopped into the back, his paddle clattering on the canoe.

  Since the incident with the bear they’d not exchanged a single word and Liz still felt a sense of threat. But now Kevin felt like the threat. She told herself that was silly, but she could not shake the dread. He was hiding something, something terrible. She was sure of it, and all she wanted right now was to be as far from him as she could get, yet there was nowhere for her to go. She was trapped.

  Even Hampton looked unhappy, his ears pressed against his head, glancing anxiously from Kevin to Beth to her.

  The wind had very suddenly died away and the sky was now deep gray with low, nearly motionless clouds. The air felt heavy and cold.

  Liz gazed out over the lake. She could not see the far side because the horizon simply disappeared into a wall of white mist in the distance. To her right the shore curved away into a high ridge that jutted sharply back into the lake, also blocking her view of what lay beyond. To the left was a long channel or bay with a steep rock cliff hugging their side of the shore. The right-hand side of the channel was low and forested. The thickening mist blocked her from seeing how far back the channel extended.

  It still amazed Liz to see such a formidable expanse of forest, rock and water with no sign of human habitation or even presence, except for the trail they had just come down and the faded wooden signpost marking its entrance. Not a house among the trees, not a mechanical sound or artificial light, not a smell of food cooking or car exhaust or any other evidence of any kind that people existed on the planet besides them.

  “We’re heading to the left,” said Kevin, pointing with his paddle. “There’s a good place to camp in a protected cove and it has a nice view of the dawn. That is, if anybody cares to get up to see it.”

  “The dawn, like it’s a big deal and I haven’t seen a million already,” muttered Beth.

  Kevin snorted. “Don’t put yourself out, kid. It’s just life passing you by.”

  They both irritated Liz. Why, she thought, could they not give it a damn rest? She looked up at the sky. “I’m not sure there’ll be a dawn to see tomorrow. These clouds look like they’re settling in. I’ve got a bad feeling we’ll be getting rain.”

  “And somehow that will be my fault, too,” said Kevin.

  Liz looked at him, frowning. “I didn’t say that. It just looks like this weather is here to stay for a while.”

  Their eyes met for a moment. His expression looked fiery, instead of the cold stare she was used to when he was in a bad mood. Even his cheeks looked flushed.

  “You all right, Kevin?” she said.

  He seemed about to snap back at her but caught himself. He paused and then shuddered as though feeling a chill. He looked back at her.

  “You may be right,” he said. “It could start to rain. We’d better get a move on so we can set up the tent before we get soaked.”

  ****

  Liz did get soaked in the sudden cold downpour that overtook them on the lake. By the time they landed the boat, however, the rain had trailed off to a fine drizzle. They quickly pitched the tent, threw in their things and then scrambled in themselves, wet and shivering.

  Liz changed into a dry set of clothes but still felt damp and cold. Hampton sat next to her with his head in her lap, all four of them staring out the screened front of the tent at the gray lake. Large drops of water fell from the trees, clapping against fallen leaves and the tent.

  “God, you stink when you’re wet,” she said to Hampton. He rolled his eyes up at her with a look that seemed apologetic. “But that’s all right.” She scratched his ears. “You’re my hero and you can smell like anything you want, sweetie.”

  No one said a word. She stared out at the lake again, the glum stillness even more oppressive than the cold humidity. It rubbed against her like sandpaper on a blister. She could almost hear the seconds ticking away, slow
as minutes. Liz did not want to be in the tent but she did not want to get wet again, either. She felt twitchy just sitting in this tiny fabric room in the middle of the wilderness, feeling as much a prisoner as an inmate behind iron bars and brick walls.

  She almost laughed at the irony, except she found she could not laugh at anything just then. There was something in the air, or maybe it was creeping up from the ground or falling down with the rain, but it felt all wrong to her. Everything felt wrong and she found herself shivering, but not from the cold.

  To her right, Beth fell onto her back. “I can’t stand this,” she said, her right hand covering her eyes. “I’m cold, I’m wet, I hate this place and I’m bored out of my gourd.”

  “Look,” said Liz, “maybe we can play a game or something. Twenty questions.”

  “Oh, Jesus, will you knock it off?” said Kevin.

  “What?” said Liz, surprised and hurt.

  “Fixing things,” he said. “Stop trying to always fix things. You’ve always fixed things for as long as I’ve known you. Why don’t you just admit that her sniveling drives you as crazy as it does me?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” snapped Liz.

  “I can’t stand that passive/aggressive routine of yours to manage what pisses you off. That’s why we never made it together.” He waved his hand in the air. “You won’t stand up to anyone or anything. Never could, never will. Liz the martyr, Liz the saint. Who could stand living with the long-suffering Liz day in and day out? Of course we broke up.”

  Liz tried to smack him but he caught her hand and held it. She struggled in his grip but he held her tight.

  “Stop it, you asshole, you’re hurting me!” she said.

  Hampton barked, confused by the aggression.