The Boy Who Killed Demons: A Novel

by Dave Zeltserman

  I told him I had my reasons, then asked if he ever saw Connor Devin. Whether he ever came by the house.

  Chaske shook his head.

  “Why’d they pick you?” I asked.

  He shrugged noncommittally. “Me and my wife have taken care of foster kids before. We’re set up with the state for it.”

  There was no point in asking him anything further. I had him give me the phone number he was supposed to call if anyone came around looking for the demon Connor Devin. As I turned to leave, he asked again, this time with a pleading in his voice, whether I was going to rat him out about Connor Devin not living there.

  “Not as long as you don’t call that number and tell them I was looking for Devin.”

  So there I was. I still had no clue where Devin lived, but if I had to guess he was living alone like all the demons I’d encountered. Weird shit was going on with this. Demons, or humans in league with them, had arranged all this, and it must’ve been done for the reason I suspected—after killing Vincent Gilman and finding his messages to some unknown person who also saw demons they wanted Devin placed in my high school, so he could keep watch over me. The whole arrangement showed how well connected these demons were—they had to be, to be able to set this up.

  And I knew why Devin hadn’t been put into an actual foster home. These demons needed to live alone. Partly because they must desire it so they can do their rituals and eat their dog meat in peace, but also they must know they’d give themselves away if they lived in close proximity to humans.

  So now I had a phone number that would lead me to Devin, or at least to whoever it was, demon or otherwise, who had set all of this up for Devin. I was tempted to call that number so I could hear whether a human or demon answered, but I knew that wouldn’t be smart. I didn’t want to tip my hand yet.

  Even though I still didn’t know where Devin lived, I’d been handed a way of getting Devin kicked out of my high school. Or at least a possible way. It wasn’t foolproof. If I ratted out Chaske, it would cause a big stink, which would most likely end with Chaske being arrested and Devin booted out of Newton North, as well as an investigation into the demons or others who were behind everything. At least that’s what could happen, but there were other ways of it playing out, including having it all blow up in my face. Chaske could end up describing me to the demons. Or the demons could be well-connected enough to get tipped off ahead of time so they could move Devin into Chaske’s house before the authorities had a chance to investigate.

  Even though it was risky to rat out Chaske, it was tempting. I found myself fantasizing about Social Services raiding whatever apartment the demon Connor Devin lived in now and finding half-eaten dog carcasses; and other horrific demon effects that Devin wouldn’t have time to dispose of. So yeah, it would be risky and dangerous, but I still might’ve done it if I didn’t have another plan in mind. Something I’d be putting into motion later tonight. The reason why I tampered with that side door earlier today before leaving the high school.

  Okay, enough of that.

  I promised earlier I’d write about what I’d been learning from L’Occulto Illuminato. In the additional pages that I’ve been able to translate, Galeotti writes about further observations of his since accepting that the neighborhood butcher was a demon. He found three other demons living in different neighborhoods in Florence, all of them living alone, all of them appearing as normal human beings when their images were reflected using a hand mirror. At some point Galeotti became convinced that these demons were butchering stray dogs for their food. That he’d spy on his neighborhood butcher shop, and even though these other demons lived in neighborhoods that had their own butcher shops, they’d come to this one, always at dusk, and left with bulky wrapped packages that Galeotti was sure were butchered dog carcasses.

  Galeotti also wrote about a rash of young girls and prostitutes having gone missing—over twenty of them disappearing during a nine month period. The body of one of them was found. The girl was thirteen and her body was discovered in a wooded area five miles from the city. Her clothes had been shredded as if by knives, and an examination showed massive internal damage as if she’d been raped by a dagger. The city never solved the girl’s murder or any of the other disappearances, but Galeotti was convinced one of the demons was responsible. Years after this incident when he was able to kill a demon and examine its body, he was even further convinced by the grotesquely misshapen form of the demon’s sex organ and its knife-like serrated edges. This is what I had suspected, and Galeotti confirmed it.

  (Note. Galeotti made the remark about killing a demon casually, as if it were nothing more than a passing reference. I reread that passage dozens of time to make sure I got it right, and there’s no doubting it. Galeotti killed a demon. I knew it had to be possible to kill them, and Galeotti confirmed it, even if he did it in a casual reference. The thought of it left me lightheaded for several minutes. Somewhere in L’Occulto Illuminato Galeotti must describe how it’s done.)

  That’s what I’ve gotten to so far. It’s twenty past nine now. I’ll be spending the next three hours doing further translation. Then I’m sneaking out of the house and putting plan ‘Fuck You Demon Devin’ in action.

  Tuesday, October 4th 8:20 PM

  THINGS DID NOT WORK OUT AS PLANNED. PUTTING IT LIGHTLY. Calling what happened a disaster would be more like it.

  At first, things looked like they’d go smoothly. I snuck out of the house last night at one o’clock in the morning without incident, retrieved the baggy of psilocybin mushrooms where I’d hidden it, and rode my bike to the high school. The side door I had tampered with was still accessible. I’d brought my burglar picks and got into the demon’s locker in less than a minute, hiding the baggy of mushrooms under a layer of garbage that lined the bottom of his locker. It smelled awful in there—I could only imagine the demonic items that he kept safeguarded in his locker during the day. I was home by a quarter to two and was able to get four and a half hours of sleep before getting up and sending an anonymous email to the school principal about Connor Devin selling drugs on school grounds, as well as having a stash hidden in his locker.

  I felt a coolness in my head while I took the school bus this morning. Curt sat next to me, and his voice was only a buzz as I nodded and pretended I was listening to him. I wanted to take the bus in so I’d arrive with everyone else. As I walked in through the main doors, I felt no nerves, instead only perfectly calm. Maybe my stomach tightened slightly when I saw the commotion going on in front of Devin’s locker, but other than that, nothing. There were three police officers by the locker, and one of them had a Black Labrador on a leash that must’ve been a drug sniffing dog. Devin, the principal and the assistant principal were also there. What made it such a commotion was the way that dog was going nuts as it tried desperately to get away from Devin. The cop holding the leash was barking commands as he fought to control the dog, and the other two cops looked puzzled by the dog’s frantic attempts to escape. All of us were being hurried along by teachers, so I couldn’t watch this scene for more than a few seconds, but I did catch a look of intense hatred on Devin’s demon face as he stared fixedly at the poor animal.

  As I continued on to my homeroom I thought that would be that, and I was back to feeling absolutely calm, the tightness in my stomach gone. I enjoyed hearing the murmurs and whispers from my fellow students as they speculated about what must’ve been going on with Devin. At least I’d finally have Devin out of my hair and, more importantly, away from Sally. So it was a shock when ten minutes later the school principal and a cop escorted Devin back to the homeroom, a nasty smirk twisting the demon’s face as he cast a glance at me. I should’ve expected what was going to happen next, but I was being too dense, and I was completely stunned when the principal called out my name. When the homeroom teacher pointed out who I was, the principal used his hand to motion me over, and in a voice that was way too calm, he asked me to join him. I was led out of the classroom and back toward my l
ocker. The other cops were waiting there, along with the drug-sniffing Black Labrador, who had calmed down by this point, and stood attentively facing my locker, his snout right up against it. I was still too dumb then to have figured out what had happened, and it was only when the principal had me open my locker and the dog bulled straight into it sticking his nose into a stack of papers on the bottom of my locker, that it started to dawn on me how Devin had turned things around. Not right away—I was in too much of a state of shock for that, but at some level I began to realize what had happened.

  Where I had screwed up was discounting the unusually powerful olfactory senses that these damn demons possess. They’re like dogs that way. The demon Connor Devin must’ve sniffed out the baggy of mushrooms I had planted in his locker, and either guessed I was the one behind the deed, or maybe even detected my scent on the baggy. After that he picked my lock, just as I had done, and returned the favor by planting the drugs in my locker. Then, after the police found his locker clean of anything illegal, Devin must’ve told them that he heard a rumor about me dealing them. Maybe the police believed him, maybe not, but it was settled once they took their drug-sniffing dog to my locker.

  You can probably guess everything that happened afterwards. I was brought to the police station, where I had to sit in a small room until my dad came to the station, and as you can probably guess, he was not happy. The police wanted to question me, but my dad the lawyer refused to let that happen, so I was then booked on a couple of different charges, including bringing illegal drugs onto school grounds. After that I had to sit in a holding area until my dad was able to arrange for me to be released to him. Neither of us spoke when we walked from the police station to where he had parked the car, nor while he drove us home. He sat frozen, unable to look at me, his face blanched of any color. It wasn’t until he pulled into our driveway that he told me how disappointed he was in me. He couldn’t even look at me as he said it, his voice cold and foreign, like he didn’t know me. Or knew me, but felt only disdain.

  “I had no idea those drugs were in my locker,” I told him. “Someone planted them there.”

  “You expect me to believe that?” he asked, his voice even harsher than before.

  “I don’t care what you believe. You can have me take a lie detector if you want. I’m not lying.”

  He didn’t bother responding verbally to that, just shook his head, his teeth clenched so tightly that I could hear them grind. Or maybe I was only imagining them grinding from the way he looked like he wanted to kill someone. We walked up the path to the front door in that same stone cold silence as earlier, and when he opened the door my mom was there waiting for us, her expression crestfallen, her skin ashen.

  “How could you do this to us?” she asked me in a hurt voice. “How could you humiliate us like this?”

  “He’s innocent,” my dad told her, his voice dripping in sarcasm. “Someone planted the drugs in his locker—at least that’s what Henry’s claiming.”

  I didn’t say anything. My stomach had knotted up so much I had to fight to keep from doubling over. All I wanted to do was get away from them and be alone in my room. But as I tried to walk past her, my mom grabbed me by my shoulders and turned me so I had to face her.

  “Look at me!” she insisted. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to us? How everyone in the neighborhood will be talking about our drug-dealing son? And do you have any idea what this has done to you? How this has affected your life? How impossible it’s going to be for you now to get into a top college?”

  There was a near hysteria in her voice and her eyes were liquid and shining with a touch of madness. Veins stood out along the side of her neck and ruined her mouth. She looked ancient right then. Ancient and crazy. All I wanted to do was break free of her, but she had her fingers gripping me like a vise. I found myself losing control as I met her wide-eyed stare.

  “I’m telling the truth about those drugs being planted in my locker,” I said. “When the police investigate this they won’t find a single witness that ever saw me sell drugs because I never did. But you’re so willing to believe the worst of me!”

  “That’s not true—”

  “Of course it is. You don’t think I noticed all the hints and the insinuations the two of you have made about me in the past, like whether I’m gay? To put your mind at ease, I’m not, and as proof, I’ve been fucking the brains out of Sally Freeman for weeks.”

  That was a stupid thing for me to say, but I was out of control right then, sick with worry and fear. Not out of anything mundane, like the drug charges, or the fact that I had disgraced the family, or that I wouldn’t be able to get into an Ivy League college anymore (not that there was ever a chance that I was going on to college anyway, how could I with what I had to do?). No—all I could think about was that the demons would be after me now. After I’d tried to frame Devin, they’d know that I was the one in contact with Vincent Gilman on that message board, and it would only be a matter of time before they’d break into my house and do to me what they did to Gilman. It wasn’t the thought of them coming after me that scared me, but the thought that I had failed and let the world down. I finally had L’Occulto Illuminato in my possession, and I had to blow everything with a stupid, idiotic ploy. At that moment I was completely lost in an ocean of fear, self-pity and disgust, and so I said something really stupid.

  My mom flinched as if she’d been slapped. Her mouth dropped open and she let go of her grip on my shoulders, her hands sliding off me as if she’d lost all her strength. Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of my dad, and he looked like he wanted to punch me. I’m not exaggerating; his right hand had curled into a fist. I turned away from both of them and ran upstairs to my room, taking three steps at a time. This all happened forty-five minutes ago, and neither of them has bothered coming after me or knocking on my door. A while ago I smelled food downstairs, but they didn’t bother calling me down for dinner. That’s fine. I’m not hungry anyway, and I probably want to see them even less than they want to see me.

  So now I’m suspended from school for an indefinite period of time, because the school takes drugs and especially drug dealing very seriously. Maybe they’ll kick me out for good. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters anymore. On the bright side, I won’t have Devin dogging me all day, and I’ll have more time to concentrate on L’Occulto Illuminato. I need that time now more than ever. I have to learn how to kill these demons before they come after me.

  Of course, it’s possible they won’t come after me. Devin might’ve only guessed that I planted the drugs in his locker, and he might believe my animosity towards him is due to jealousy over him trying to steal Sally from me. I know it’s only a small probability, but still, maybe the demons aren’t yet convinced that I’m the person they’re after. Maybe if I do get kicked out of school, Devin will disappear back into the woodwork where he came from, and Sally will be safe. What would be the point of them keeping him there if I was gone?

  I checked my cell phone a few minutes ago, and there were a dozen or so text messages from Sally, and almost the same number of voicemails also from her. I’m not up to reading or listening to them yet. I might just delete them without bothering to read or listen to them. Whatever strength I can muster I need for these damn demons, and I don’t think I could take being scolded by her now.

  It’s funny, Curt never leaves text or voice messages—something to do with an inbred paranoia on his part, but this time he left a voice message. Like with Sally’s, I didn’t listen to it. Nothing from Wesley.

  I’m sure Devin is feeling pretty smug and pleased with himself right now. Maybe he feels as if he’s discredited me enough so even if I did ever tell anyone about demons, no one would believe me, especially if they thought I had a history with hallucinogenic drugs. The more I think about it, the demons will have to keep him in school until they know whether I’ve been expelled or simply suspended. What Devin and the other demons don’t know is that I know he doesn’
t live at that address in Waltham, where the school thinks he lives. It would be risky, but if I could find out where he’s living, I could send the authorities swarming over there to discover whatever horrors he has lying around. I have the slip of paper on my desk right now; the one I had written that phone number on that I had gotten from Chaske. I need to figure out what to do with it. This time, though, I won’t be as hasty as I was with planting those drugs.

  My phone’s ringing again. It’s Sally. I’m going to turn off the phone without answering. I don’t want to hear her voice right now.

  I need to get back to L’Occulto Illuminato, but my mind’s racing too much to concentrate on it. I’d hoped writing this journal entry would’ve helped calm me down, but it hasn’t.

  Friday, October 7th 4:10 PM

  TWENTY MINUTES AGO WESLEY CAME BY THE HOUSE TO ACCUSE me of spiking his chocolate milk with psilocybin mushrooms. I denied it, but he was persistent.

  “The whole school is talking about the police finding mushrooms in your locker,” he said.

  I had brought Wesley into the kitchen, but he had refused my offers for a snack or anything to drink, or even to sit down, and stood glaring at me with this angry, pinched expression. His skin had paled to the color of milk. Even though it gave him a psychological advantage, I took a seat at the table after I started brewing a pot of coffee. Espresso has started making me jittery, so I’ve switched to drinking plain coffee.

  “Those mushrooms were planted in my locker,” I said in a weary tone, which has become much more weary over the last three days after all the heart-to-heart talks I’ve been having with my dad where I’ve been constantly having to repeat my innocence.

  Wesley snorted at that. “What a coincidence,” he forced out, his mouth pinching even tighter. “Mushrooms being planted in your locker and also ending up in my chocolate milk when it was only the two of us together.”