Demoneater

by Royce Buckingham

  DEMONKEEPER II

  - DEMONEATER -

  By ROYCE BUCKINGHAM

  BOY BOOKS INK.

  Copyright © 2011 by Royce Buckingham

  A Story Merchant Book

  www.demonkeeper.com

  Cover Art by Max Meinzold

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  I’d like to thank the many dedicated teachers and librarians I know and the many, many more I will certainly come to know in the future for your continuing support of my work and other quality books for boys.

  Thanks for doing what you do simply because you love it…so do I.

  PROLOGUE

  WEXFORD, IRELAND—AD 1739

  “My master has returned from abroad alive!” George McFeen scrawled on the crinkled calfskin vellum page of the Journal.

  It was a simple sentence—short, clear, delighted, reflecting the Irish student’s obvious love for his teacher. McFeen finished scribbling with a flourish, leaped up from the desk, and hurried out of the writing room to continue the celebration.

  McFeen’s visit to the desk a day later was neither so brief nor so happy. He sat tapping the inkwell with his quill, frowning for a time before he dipped it inside and set it upon the page.

  “At first I was overjoyed by my mentor’s survival,” he wrote, choosing his words carefully before recording them in the Journal. “I’d given him up for dead. We all had, for no man could have lived at sea for thirty days without food, without water, and yet somehow he did. He told us that he’d fed on the juicy insects that infested the rotted wood of his craft.”

  A draft made the candle flicker, and McFeen glanced over his shoulder. Seeing nothing, he closed his eyes. He sensed nothing in the room beyond the reach of his sight either, so he continued.

  “He returned without the demons, reporting that he’d lost them. I was too happy to question this. But he acts strangely now—stranger than usual. When he speaks of them, he drools.”

  McFeen pushed himself back from the desk and found that he was sweating. He closed the Journal and took care to lock the door on his way out.

  A week later, the door opened again. McFeen entered quickly and sat. He wrote with a shaky hand.

  “He has been unnaturally efficient in their capture of late, sniffing them out like a hound. And he is changing. Tonight, when I walked past the parlor, I spied him hunched over the entity we had just acquired, a famine demon of the first order that we’d chased about the island for nearly a year. As I peered through the doorway, I saw him dip his head. I heard crunching and the demon’s chilling shriek. I could not see, but I know that our purpose is compromised, for we were sworn to protect them and he has killed it. I slipped out of the parlor unnoticed, I think.”

  Two days later, McFeen walked to the desk to make a last entry in the Journal. He sat. It was brief. He finished with a sad swipe of his pen and rose, solemn. The Demonkeeper’s Journal sat on the desk open to the grim passage.

  “He is devouring them,” it said simply. “My mentor is a Demoneater.”

  CHAPTER 1

  THE WAKING OF THE TROLL

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, USA—Early 21 Century

  As a creeping drizzle dampened the Seattle evening, a young girl in a pink dress ducked timidly beneath the Aurora Avenue Bridge, chased by the last rays of the sunset over Elliot Bay.

  She turned, looked up, and froze. The Fremont Troll loomed over her, a gnarled, frowning figure so big that its left hand clutched an old VW Bug as though it were a softball. Its massive upper body rose from the ground between the huge bridge struts, its lower half seemingly buried in the pavement.

  “Is it there?” her dad called from behind her.

  She couldn’t find the courage to speak, so she just nodded as he blundered under the bridge wielding a digital camera the size of a deck of cards.

  “Wow!” he said. “Hop up on its right hand and I’ll get a picture.”

  The girl glanced from the Troll to the setting sun and back at her father. She gave him a pleading look.

  “It’s bigger than you said,” she whispered, as though scared it might hear her and wake up. She was stalling, hoping that the sun would go down before her dad could make her go near the thing for the photo. But she didn’t exactly want the sun to go down either.

  “C’mon, it won’t bite you,” he prodded, “it’s just a statue.”

  Indeed, the huge monster was made of concrete—a crazy art piece in a most unexpected place. It leered down at her with an expression she could not quite place. Displeasure? Annoyance? Mild hunger? The girl took a deep breath, walked toward it, and found a handhold. She closed her eyes as she pulled herself up onto a rough concrete finger bigger than her entire body and then spun around and motioned for her dad to hurry and take the shot.

  He realized that this would be his only chance. He snapped once and then quickly again for good measure. “Okay, back to the car,” he said. “Hurry, it’s starting to rain harder.” Then he was gone, scurrying out from under the bridge.

  The sun sank behind the islands and left her alone with the Troll. With gray rain clouds hiding the moon, the space under the bridge immediately went dark. She turned backwards to climb down, but her dress caught on a snag. She could see the Troll’s face above her, vague in the shadows but huge and scowling. She yanked at her dress, not caring whether it tore, just wanting to get away. For a moment it wouldn’t come free. Then, somehow, it shifted and slipped loose. She slid off the giant finger and dropped to the ground, her mind racing. Did the dress come free on its own or did the Troll move? she thought. No. Impossible. She didn’t wait to find out. Instead, she hurried after her dad.

  She’d dashed ten steps and was almost out from under the bridge when she heard a thunderous sound behind her.

  Craaaaaack! Crunnnnnch!

  Her heart leaped into her throat, and her eyes grew wide like saucers. Then, suddenly, she realized the nature of the look on the massive statue’s face. It wasn’t malice or anger or even hunger. It was same emotion she was feeling: fear.

  She risked a terrified look over her shoulder and gasped. The space under the bridge was empty, except for the discarded VW Bug, which spun on its top, and a huge hole in the pavement. The gigantic statue was gone.

  She stared across scattered shards of concrete that littered the street where the Troll had fled. Somebody’s in for a big surprise when they wake up tomorrow morning, she thought. Then she turned and ran too.

  CHAPTER 2

  MORNING

  Four blunt feet tiptoed to the head of the staircase. They tapped along the wood floor as the morning sun crept through the window and sent slivers of light down the hall. The simple bed settled itself alongside the top step and gave itself a firm shake, rattling its joints and tugging its sheets down off the thirteen-year-old boy snoozing underneath them.

  Richie rolled over and reached for the covers. They dodged his hand, eliciting a long groan from him. The light found his eyes, making him wince. Richie gave up. He pulled himself to the edge of the bed, slid his legs over the side, and promptly plummeted down the stairs like an out of control slinky.

  Wham-whump-bam-thumpity-whack!

  Richie lay in a pile of tangled limbs on the landing at the bottom of the stairs like an injured pretzel, glaring up at his bed through his twisted legs.

  “Friggin’ owww!”

  Richie uncurled painfully. He grabbed a nearby framed photograph of an eagle swooping down to catch a salmon. He took aim and hurled it up at the bed, but the frame sprouted wings mid-flight and flew harmlessly across the foyer. It landed in an open space on the wall and clung there, slightly crooked.

  The bed rattled on its legs, delighted, and clattered off down the hall. Richie rose and gave chase.

  “That’s the
last straw, bed!” Richie skipped up the stairs and skidded across the hall in his socks, fighting for traction like a cartoon character running in midair. He slammed into the wall.

  Thump!

  The bulky bed maneuvered around a corner as Richie recovered his balance and resumed the chase.

  Nathaniel was already up. He heard the ruckus and stepped from his room, calmly grabbing his young apprentice by the shoulder as he slid past, bringing him to an abrupt stop.

  “Sleep in again?” Nat asked.

  “I want a different bed,” Richie said.

  “That’s the bed I got when I was an apprentice.”

  Richie stomped his foot. “C’mon, Nat. It walks somewhere different every night. Yesterday I woke up and dangled my foot out in the toilet.”

  “Yeah, I hated that too,” Nat agreed. Then he handed Richie a mop and bucket. “Here you go. The hallways need a good cleaning,” he said, and he walked away.

  Richie frowned, dumped the bucket of water on the floor, and started mopping.

  As Richie worked his way down the hall, he trudged past two carved masks, one iron and one wood, hanging on opposite walls—the bickering audio possessions.

  “Hey, kid,” the iron mask said, “is he making you do all the work?”

  “Zip it, uglies,” Richie said. “I know you two are trouble.”

  “Like mentor, like apprentice,” Woody said, shaking itself back and forth on its nail.

  “Dhaliwahl used to make Nat do all the grunt work too,” added Irony.

  “It’s a vicious cycle,” Woody said.

  “I’m not listening.” Richie put his hands over his ears.

  “He’s using you, kid,” Irony said.

  “La-la-la-la-la-not-listening-la-la,” Richie sang as he backed down the hall, mopping quickly away from them.

  “Just keep your eyes open,” Woody called after him, its own painted eyes bulging out for emphasis.

  Richie finished mopping and prepared for his next chore—his least favorite—feeding the Beast. He hauled two buckets of bloody fish slop—demon food—across the foyer.

  “Okay, move it,” he growled at the mustard-colored East Indian rug.

  The rug curled back for him and he walked to the trapdoor in the middle of the foyer floor. When he bent down to unlatch the door, the rug rolled up again suddenly and smacked him in the rump.

  “Hey!” Richie jumped, terrified. The chore unnerved him anyway. He didn’t need any surprises. “You want me to stain you permanently?” Richie shook one of the buckets of disgusting fish guts at the rug. “I’m not in the mood today, all right?”

  The rug retreated, and Richie turned back to the trapdoor. He took a deep breath, unhooked the latch, and began dumping the slop through the grate and down the feeding chute into the basement, where the Beast waited in the darkness to be fed.

  Richie could hear the mixture squelch down the chute and splatter onto the dirt floor far below. “I hope you choke on a fish bone,” he called down.

  A growl echoed up from below. Richie gasped, kicked the trapdoor closed, and slammed home the bolt.

  “Gross, scary, and deadly,” he mumbled to himself. “Worst chore in history.”

  Richie sometimes felt trapped in the house where they collected the wayward manifestations of chaos. After living on the streets for years, life in a box seemed like a prison at times. Nat had been kind to take in a delinquent homeless kid like him, and it was welcome shelter, but it was also a sort of voluntary confinement. With the demons of the house preying on his sanity, there were times when he felt like he’d committed himself to a private mental institution with only two patients, him and his teenage mentor, and he wasn’t sure they weren’t both crazy.

  He needed to get out of the house, he decided. There were chores that could be done outside in the fresh air and the sanity of the light of day.

  CHAPTER 3

  DEATH OF THE BEER DEMONS

  The light of day brought no comfort to the playful beer demons of McHale’s Irish Pub on the Seattle waterfront. The tavern was closed in the mornings, and the small wormlike creatures could usually splash freely about in scattered half-full glasses and openly frolic across the sticky, well-worn tables before the cleaners came and they had to squeeze themselves back into the kegs to hide.

  The worms were not a malicious sort of demon. The fun-loving little chaotic entities swam in the pints at night when the place was loud and packed with humans, sliding unnoticed down the throats of merrymaking patrons and wiggling their way to their brains to disorient them for a few hours. A bit of sport and then they slipped out as discretely as they had snuck in, leaving their human host no worse for wear, though they sometimes left behind a dull ache in the head where they had lodged themselves if silly or especially thirsty humans crowded too many of the happy squigglers into their heads too tightly.

  This morning, however, the little demons’ carefree play was cut short before the cleaners arrived. An unfamiliar shadow appeared in the window as the sun rose. Moments later, the glass cascaded inward, shattering their peace. They tittered and fled, making for the safety of the kegs. But the worms were slow, and the thing was fast. It slithered in through the broken window and cut them off, leaving them out in the open, exposed.

  It was not a demon, for it exuded no chaos and, in fact, stalked them methodically, carefully rounding them up like a sheep-herding dog. It was not a human either, for clearly it could see them. It was something else.

  The beer worms were a simple form of chaos and not very smart. They gathered in a group at the end of the bar, writhing into a pile to seek safety in numbers—a mistake. The shadow loomed over them and thrust a sharp pincer into their midst, hoisting one of their number to its gaping maw. The hapless demon it selected squealed as the thing began to squeeze. There was a hollow popping sound, and the liquid chaos that gave the squirming beer worm life burst out through its head and into the thing’s open gullet. It discarded the empty carcass of the dead demon like a peanut shell and thrust its awful limb in to snatch another. With all of them gathered together, the Demoneater could not miss.

  It sat at the bar and gorged on the whimpering little demons, annoyed that the huge, delicious-smelling Troll had gotten away while it was changing into a suitable form to eat the massive thing. But the city of Seattle was rife with chaos, and there were several major elementals living in the open that it could hunt down and devour. The Demoneater also sensed that a large number of demons were gathered in a single location—it just needed to find them.

  CHAPTER 4

  YARDWORK

  Richie left the tumult of demons gathered inside and headed out into the overgrown yard. The house was chock full of the unpredictable creatures, and Nat cared very deeply for them—even the annoying ones. Nat preached to Richie about his obligation as an apprentice Keeper to give them a safe place to live and their solemn duty to preserve the collection efforts of the generations of Keepers that came before them. But it was hard when the demons they cared for behaved like a rowdy classroom full of uppity, ill-behaved children. Nat was technically an adult, but Richie didn’t feel old enough to be a responsible grown-up yet, so he listened and nodded but didn’t sweat the details of Demonkeeping nearly as much as his mentor. As long as the demons didn’t all croak or escape, he figured he was doing a bang-up job as a teenage apprentice.

  Richie hunted around in the garden shed and found an extension ladder. The house was four stories tall, towering more than thirty feet into the dreary Seattle sky. Nat hadn’t said anything about the ladder, so Richie didn’t think it was a demon. But he was still learning to use his Demonkeeping abilities, and he couldn’t always see them. The ladder seemed normal—aluminum, heavy, three sliding sections.

  Richie tipped it up against the house. A rope and pulley system lifted each section to its full height, and, after some tugging and yanking, the ladder stretched all the way to the roof. Richie gave it one last kick. It felt solid. In fact, its rubber-tipped
arms seemed to grip the house, and the ladder didn’t budge at all. He nodded and started up.

  Once he was atop the ladder, Richie could see over downtown Seattle and Elliot Bay all the way out to the islands of Puget Sound. The Space Needle rose against the city skyline, a slender, skyscraping monument from the 1962 World’s Fair. It had a large rotating restaurant on top with an observation deck almost six hundred feet above the ground. He had always wanted to go up, but as a street kid, he’d never been welcome. He wondered if Nat would take him some day.

  Standing thirty feet in the air, Richie felt peaceful and powerful at the same time, two things he’d never felt while living on the streets before he’d landed the job of apprentice Demonkeeper and moved in with Nat. Maybe doing chores in an old house infested by demons isn’t so bad after all, he thought. Then he turned to dig the sludge out of the rain gutter.

  The ancient gutters on the edge of the roof collected all sorts of debris that the wind lifted or the sky dropped. Richie dug into a gloppy mixture of leaves, wrappers, bird dung, moss, and other putrefied gunk that was unrecognizable. He even saw a Frisbee lodged in the serpentine metallic half-tubes that encircled the roof and guarded the house from the elements. He ran a hand shovel through the gutter, scooping up the mucky mess, being careful not to touch it. He knew better. He tossed the sludge over his shoulder, and it plummeted thirty feet down like a shower of wet, decaying compost. It splattered across Mr. Neebor’s garden next door, sizzling and burning brown holes in his delicate flowers.

  A seagull drifted in and landed on the rain gutter Richie had just cleared, perhaps hoping to find some hidden morsel uncovered by his work. In New York City, the rats of the skies were pigeons, but seagulls were the aerial vermin of Seattle. Richie didn’t hate them. They were scavengers, like he’d been, and he could appreciate their lifestyle. He gave the bird a friendly warning as it hopped onto the rim of the gutter.