Nether

by Jason Beymer

  Standing in the cold accomplished nothing, and the seconds ticked away. To make matters worse, a dead sheriff bled all over his upholstery in the adjacent field. With the coming sunrise, that police cruiser wouldn’t stay hidden much longer. Though she’d framed it as a perfect suicide, Lorraine didn’t want to be here when the Sheriff’s Office came to investigate.

  Count to ten. That always calmed her. Count to ten. Lorraine kicked a bottle, and it shattered against the curb. She mouthed each number, eyes fixed on the door.

  What am I doing here? she thought.

  Lorraine had spent the past hour looking for Burklin. She’d driven past a dog park he frequented with his disgusting schnitzel and the bars and cafes he used to haunt. She’d even driven by her house, concerned he might have left the stiff on the porch.

  Then Garrick had called her cell. “I spoke to Senator McPhee,” he’d said. “She’s set up a meeting between you and Max at Hoppy’s Diner. Go there now.”

  “And do what?”

  “Find out all you can about the dead girl, anything she might have said before he killed her. Above all else, do not let Max out of your sight.”

  Lorraine had never exposed herself to the demon before. “Don’t lose faith,” she said between breaths. Garrick wouldn’t allow the demon to kill her. She had to believe that.

  The door looked different, the paint not as chipped and browned as she remembered, but maybe that was all in her mind. She wasn’t the same woman who’d passed through here seven years ago.

  Lorraine wiped away tears. On the other side of the door, a maniacal teenager waited. She resumed her count and made it to ten. “Trust Garrick. Trust Garrick. Trust … damn it.” No. Her hand hovered over the door handle. No matter how many times the words rolled off her tongue, they didn’t ring true.

  Lorraine pulled out her cellphone and dialed the old man.

  “Yes?” he answered.

  “I can’t do this,” she said. “I’ve never spoken to him before.”

  “Trust me, Lorraine,” Garrick said. “Nothing will happen to you. You’re safe.”

  “But what about your warnings? You’ve always told me and Burklin to keep our distance, that we would die if we ever came too close to Max.”

  “I said that? Oh, pillow talk and nonsense. He’s just a demon. How could he possibly hurt you?”

  Her head spun. She didn’t know what to say. “You—you told me—”

  “Trust and faith, Lorraine. I need you. We’re a trinity. Why would I jeopardize that?”

  “You used to tell us about the fuck bubble all the time. That the Nether’s safeguards would kill any protector who—”

  “Fucked Bubble,” Garrick corrected her.

  “What?

  “Gotta run.” The phone clicked off.

  Lorraine kept the cell close to her ear for several seconds. Then she pocketed it and took a tremendous breath. Turn around and leave, she thought. Just turn around and—

  And Garrick would find her and kill her. Maybe he’d even kill Burklin’s soul.

  She had to go inside.

  Lorraine opened the door. She hesitated a moment, half in, half out. Then she walked into Hoppy’s for the second time in her life.

  Puke-green walls and the smell of old people with bladder issues greeted her. Chewed, discarded gum matted down the orange carpet. Black mold ran the length of the ceiling, where the tiles bowed and threatened to give way. Five booths outfitted the narrow dining room, all boasting the same worn, red upholstery. A cone light fixture hung over each one.

  Lorraine saw only a single customer: Max. He sat in a booth near the middle of the diner, wearing a red polo shirt—buttoned haphazardly—and cargo shorts that showed off two pale legs. The employees, a waiter and a short order cook, watched their lone patron from the pickup window. Both looked apprehensive.

  They should be, Lorraine thought. If they knew Max’s habits, they’d run screaming into the night.

  The rail-thin waiter had an Adam’s apple the size of a baseball, and clogged pores had victimized his face. He handed a bag of ice to the cook on the other side of the window. “I told you not to fuck with him,” he said.

  The squat short-order cook wore a filthy apron. His left eye had swollen shut, and he placed the ice against it. “We should call the cops,” he said.

  “Then what?” the waiter said. “I told you he’s batshit crazy. Besides, Mr. Garrick already docked our pay when he caught you snooping around the Dumpster out back. I make good money here. Don’t mess this gig up for me.”

  “Nobody disrespects me like that.”

  “Easy. You’ve heard the rumors about him. Max makes people disappear.”

  “Have you seen the Dumpster, man?” The cook fixed his one good eye on the demon. “I wasn’t snooping. I went out there for a smoke last week, and this truck drove around back. Three tiny men emptied it out. I saw a severed arm with a wristwatch strapped to it. The driver of the truck, some fuckin’ elf in a Hawaiian shirt, pulled a gun on me. A gun. I’ve had enough. Now this little bastard comes in here and punches me in the face? And whenever I call Mr. Garrick to complain, he tells me to treat that little shit like the Queen of England. Him! This place … it’s not normal. He,” the cook pointed at Max, “he ain’t normal. The dude punched me, man.”

  “Calm down.”

  “But it—”

  The waiter shoved the cook as Lorraine moved farther inside. “Quiet.” He turned to face her. “Lady, you’d better leave.”

  Lorraine donned her best smile as her enchantments did their work. The glamour tingled its way along her scalp, coloring her hair a brilliant shade of red. Her face smoothed. Her cheeks blossomed. The facade cascaded over her body and transformed it with prickling effervescence.

  “You boys look hot,” she said.

  The short-order cook dropped the ice pack, settled his hands beneath the apron and rubbed himself.

  “I’m sorry,” Lorraine said. “I guess I didn’t make myself clear. Hi. You boys look hot. Oh, yum yum. Do you like what you see? Now you say ‘yes, hot mama.’“

  “Nobody talks like that.” The cook eyed Lorraine’s cleavage. He smiled goofily, showing busted teeth. “Yes, hot mama.”

  “Good. Now fetch me a slice of blueberry pie with extra whipped cream and five cherries.” She moved closer. “And stop talking shit about Max, unless you want to wake up without your heads tomorrow morning.”

  The pair nodded then disappeared into the kitchen.

  Lorraine sauntered along the row of booths. She willed her hair to shorten by three inches until it barely touched her neckline. Her blue jeans loosened, and she cinched them up with both hands.

  You can do this, she told herself.

  Lorraine slipped into the booth directly across from Max and edged her butt along the cracked upholstery. She tossed her hair away from her face and let her enormous breasts settle upon the tabletop.

  No going back now. She sat less than four feet away from him, closer than she’d ever been, and well within the circumference of the Fucked Bubble. Lorraine’s heart beat faster. Still, she didn’t expect to spontaneously combust. What had Garrick told her? The same “mark” that gave her the ability to shapeshift also worked as an aura switch. “You and Burklin have opaque auras, Lorraine,” he’d said, “giving you a unique energy charge. Call it the Blessing of the Nether. Unfortunately, when you break the demon’s proximity bubble you trip a switch, reversing the energy and washing away the opacity. As a result, you begin attracting bad luck.”

  Step within the invisible boundary, kiss your ass goodbye. That’s what the old man always said. Death wouldn’t come via some mystical poof. She wouldn’t simply disappear or explode, but she might look up at the sky in time to see a piano fall on her head, slip in a puddle of water and land on a knife, get struck by a stray bolt of lightning on a cloudless night. One began to attract bad luck until one dropped dead.

  Not this time though, she thought. Garrick wouldn’t let i
t happen. Maybe he’d lied about the whole thing. Maybe the Nether played jokes on gullible shape shifters. Regardless, she didn’t have a choice. If she didn’t do this and decided to run instead, Garrick would find her. He would always find her.

  “Hi,” she said.

  The seventeen-year-old took his finger out of his nose and produced a dull smile. Blond sheepdog’s hair covered both eyes, and Lorraine could barely see his baby blues. A black stain covered the front of his polo shirt, likely the dead woman’s bodily fluids.

  “Hello,” she tried again.

  “Are you a hooker?” Max asked. He resumed the archeological dig in his left nostril. “‘Cause I’m waiting for someone. Give me a little suck while I wait if you wanna.” He unbuttoned his cargo shorts.

  Lorraine frowned. “I came to talk.”

  Max blinked three times, then rebuttoned.

  God, was this the exalted Lord Avnas she’d sworn to protect? The one Garrick counted on to win the sweepstakes? He had the look of a teenager who spent all day staring at a television, jaw atrophied and hanging. Did every demon lord look this imbecilic up close? No wonder they fizzled out so young.

  Lorraine extended her right leg and brushed his under the table. “I know what happened at your house earlier tonight, baby. I saw it.”

  “Saw what?” He scooted his leg away.

  Lorraine concentrated on maintaining her sexiness. She willed herself to become more stunning, more alluring. She’d never cranked up the heat this high before, and still the boy blinked and gawked about.

  Lorraine tried again. “I saw the Asian piece of ass you killed. I know you slit her throat, beat her up, stabbed her.”

  “Oh.”

  “But I don’t judge. I’ve made my share of messes.”

  The acne-afflicted waiter stumbled out of the kitchen. His nose was broken, or at least messy enough to give that impression. A gash had opened above his left eye. As he emerged with the slice of blueberry pie, the short-order cook ran out behind him. The waiter kicked the cook in the stomach and sent him falling backward. “She’s mine!” he shouted. “I called dibs.”

  The waiter hurried to the table and deposited the plate in front of her. “Here you are, lady. Blueberry pie.” He ogled Lorraine’s breasts. A drop of blood fell from his nose and landed on top of the whipped cream. “Ooh,” he said. He picked up a spoon and scooped it out. “Sorry about that. Me and the cook … we had a disagreement over who got to deliver the pie. I won.”

  Lorraine paid no attention. Why was Max so disinterested in her? Had her power stopped working? She needed to perform a test.

  Lorraine pouted out her bottom lip. “I asked for seven cherries,” she said. “But I only count five.”

  “You asked for five.”

  “Are you sure you want to argue with someone this hot over two additional cherries?”

  “No ma’am.” He shook his head, then grabbed the plate and dashed back to the kitchen.

  Yep. She still had it.

  “What do you want from me, lady?” Max asked. “Mom said you wanted to talk about her stupid election.”

  “Tell me about the Asian girl you murdered. Why was she in your house?”

  Max looked away. “Are you for real?”

  “Tell me who the woman was. Your life depends on it.”

  “My life? Why? Are you gonna sit on me, fatty butt?”

  Fatty? Uh-oh.

  “You want to know why she came to my house?” Max asked. “Wait. Why were you at my house? If you know about the dead chick, then …” He cracked his knuckles and smiled. “I get to do more stabby-stabby.”

  Lorraine shrank back in her seat. “I cleaned up your mess. I had to get rid of the Asian woman’s corpse after you raped her.”

  “I didn’t rape her.”

  “Sure you didn’t.”

  “I don’t know who that bitch was. I was smokin’ a doob on my bed when she came into my room, looking all stupid. I was like, ‘Woah, hot Asian chick!’ The doobs made me all hard and stuff.”

  “And that’s when you tried to rape her?”

  “No, fatty. That bitch was whack.”

  She hoped Max would expand on “whack,” but instead he slackened his jaw and gawked at the moldy ceiling tiles.

  Lorraine strained to get the sexiness working. She tightened every muscle in her face. She held her breath, pushing, pushing, and closed her eyes tighter. Lorraine cranked up the pheromones until her sexiness bloomed, her scent merging with the molecules in the air. When she opened her eyes again, she winced at the demon’s dumbfounded smile, crooked on one side.

  The kitchen doors swung open. This time the cook came tumbling through. He landed on his face. Despite the fall, he kept the plate of blueberry pie level. He dusted himself off and limped in Lorraine’s direction.

  “Seven cherries,” the cook said. He set the plate in front of her. “That waiter won’t bother you anymore. I promise.”

  “Thank you,” Lorraine said.

  He blushed. “Can we have sex now?”

  “Run along. My handsome friend and I need privacy.”

  The cook rocked back and forth and lifted his feet. He broke into a pee-pee dance, gripping his erection and shuffling about as if the carpet was on fire. “I need to put my penis inside you. It hurts.”

  “No.”

  “But … ma’am.”

  “I’ll change my mind if you’re a good listener and run back into the kitchen.” Perhaps she cranked up her talents too high. At this rate, all heterosexual males within a ten-mile radius would find themselves aroused. Soon they would pour into Hoppy’s parking lot like a scene from a bad zombie movie: clustered groups of masturbating males, skulking toward the door, moaning “vagina,” instead of “brains.”

  The horny cook retreated.

  “Look,” Lorraine said. She slapped the table to get the demon’s attention. “I’ll come right out and say it. You’re supposed to dig me right now. With all the charm I’m putting on, you should be humping the table. Are you gay? I can grow an imaginary penis if you think it’ll help. Sheathed or unsheathed, say the word.”

  Max breathed lazily through his gaping mouth.

  “Tell me who that woman was!” Lorraine shouted.

  Max shrugged. “I told you I don’t know. When I stabbed her, it felt all cool and stuff. So I kept doing it.”

  “Why was she in your house?”

  “I don’t know. As soon as I chased her into the living room, she told me to sit down and start talking. ‘Start talking?’ I said to her. What the hell is that? Dude, she treated me like a bitch. I wanted to fuck her up bad.”

  “What did she want to talk about?”

  “Let me have your blueberry pie. All I’ve eaten is a bag of chips.”

  “Tell me what she wanted.”

  “The chick shook her whole body all weird. Like, um, when my friend Jimmy overdosed on boom rock. So I was like, ‘Damn, this girl wants me bad.’ I started ripping off her clothes and stuff. Then she reached for something inside a bag, and I jumped her. I thought she might be reaching for a gun. Or a knife. I don’t know, some kind of weapon anyway.”

  “She had a seizure?”

  “Huh?”

  “Forget it. What kind of bag was it?”

  “You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?” Max uncrossed his arms and leaned forward. He scooped the whipped cream with his dirty index finger and sucked on it. “You know my secret, and all the things I like to do. Is that why you’re so afraid of me?”

  “I’m not,” she said, but she didn’t fool anyone. If Garrick had told her the truth, then she’d tripped the switch, making her death inevitable. She might as well shapeshift into a stick of dynamite.

  “It’s okay to be scared,” he said. “I’d be scared, too. I like to kill things. Chicks mostly. I never told no one that before. This is good whipped cream. I think about eating them sometimes. You know, cutting off a flap of skin and noshing on it. I smoked a liver once. I think that’s what
it was. It was all gray and stuff. I put it into a bong and smoked the shit out of it. This one chick at school … right before I slit her throat she said, ‘Max, you’ve got a creepy vibe.’ So I says, ‘Huh?’ like I usually do, ‘cause it makes me sound cool and stuff. And she says, ‘You’re creepy. It’s like you’d kill us all if you knew you could get away with it.’ And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I can get away with it. ‘Cause every time I kill someone, I think their body fucking disappears.” He burst into laughter, spittle flying. “You know what else? You’d look real good with a hole in your neck.”

  Chapter 13

  Crouching Dachshund, Hidden Cellphone

  Burklin parked the Eiffel in front of Max’s house and scanned the neighborhood. Lorraine must have gotten rid of the police cruiser, along with the sheriff. He lowered his head and looked through the front window blinds. The lights were still on inside.

  “This is a terrible idea,” Pearl said from the passenger seat. “On so many levels. It’s not ‘barking at an unleashed Rottweiler’ bad. More like ‘eating a bowling ball while swimming in a lake’ bad.”

  “I know. Max might be in there.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you? It would bother me.”

  Burklin removed the keys from the ignition and pocketed them. “Of course it does. I don’t know; maybe he’s still gone. Maybe he went to bed, got drunk and passed out. I don’t have any choice.”

  “Call Garrick and apologize.”

  “Not happening.”

  Burklin stared at the house. He tried to get a glimpse of the teenager through the window, but saw no movement. He knew this was a bad idea. Still, he couldn’t think of a better way to get his soul back. Wanda was key, and if Lorraine had missed a bag inside the house during her cleanup, he needed to find it. That bag might contain answers.

  Burklin scratched Pearl behind the ears. “Stay in the car.”