Letting the Demons Out

by Ray Wallace

  Eventually, I found the courage to ask, "And if I refuse?"

  For the second time that night, I heard him laugh.

  "If you do not write the story, you will suffer a death unlike any experienced before in the history of the world. It is within my capabilities to keep a human alive long past the point when death should have occurred. Days... Weeks... And many, many things can be done in that length of time, things you could never imagine, would never want to imagine..."

  Mouth suddenly dry, I forced out one more question: "If I write the story?"

  The monster gave a small laugh before replying: "I'll show mercy and make it quick."

  So here I am and my final story nears completion. I am about to die. Am I afraid? Of course, I'm afraid. But I am an old man, have lived a long and mostly happy life. Soon I will be with my beloved in whatever sort of "afterlife" awaits me on the other side. In that, at least, I can find solace. Do not mourn me. Mourn the world. For, undoubtedly, this final tale of mine will be discovered and eventually find its way into print, believed to be nothing more than a work of fiction. And on that day the real nightmare will begin.

  I do have one small, remaining hope however. It has occurred to me that the entire list of six names may need to be read for the magic to work, that reading one alone may not properly invoke the summoning.

  A small hope, yes, but one that I find myself clinging to desperately.

  Now I must bring this to an end.

  I feel the need, once again, to stress that I do not write this of my own free will. I have no choice in the matter, am forced to do so by the one who is known as:

  Ny-Aratta.

  May his name not consume your thoughts.

  - IT CAME FROM THE SWIMMING POOL -

  Author's note: This one appeared in an anthology called Monsters Ink and, I have to say, it was a hell of a lot of fun to write. If you've ever happened to see a dirty swimming pool then I don't think you'll have much difficulty understanding where the inspiration for this one came from. I've thought about using the old fellow, Wilbur, in another story at some point in the future. Something about his crass nature appeals to me. Go figure...

  *

  "I'm telling you, Margaret, that's one sorry motherfucker living across the street from us."

  "Wilbur! Such language!"

  "Well, it's true. Just look at that place! What a shit sty! You think he could mow the grass sometime this year? Or have one of those good-for-nothing kids do it? Christ almighty! And look at those oil stains in the driveway. Looks like King Kong wiped his ass there or something."

  "Now, Wilbur! Will you stop?! Always going on about those people. I swear. Why don't you come away from the window? Sit down. I'll get you a beer. You know what your doctor said about your stress levels."

  "My doctor. Huh. Screw him too! My stress is just fine. If it wasn't for that damned idiot across the street. I knew we should have moved into a neighborhood with a homeowners' association. His sorry ass would have been kicked outta here by now. But no! There he stays, driving down my friggin' property values with that eyesore of a house of his! Hell, I'm half tempted to go over there the next time he's not home and burn the place down."

  "That's enough, Wilbur! I don't want to hear any more about it. You come in here and sit down, watch some TV. It's almost time for our shows anyway."

  "Oh, all right Margaret. I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't let it bother me so much. I just can't help it sometimes. How in the world can people live like that? I shudder to think what the inside of that place looks like. And don't they have a swimming pool out back? Probably looks like Satan's shitter out there!"

  "Oh, for God's sake, Wilbur..."

  *

  The primer gray Chevy rounded the corner, cruised past poor, anguished Wilbur's house as it did every weekday at about five-thirty in the evening. The car backfired and belched a black puff of smoke as it slowed and turned into the oil stained driveway. Then the engine was killed and a man got out of the driver's side door among a protesting of hinges in desperate need of lubrication. And the man who emerged? Well, he was in desperate need of a shower. And a diet too, for that matter.

  His name was Bill Plummer and he had lived across the street from Wilbur for nearly five years now. He was a big man, tall with a gut to match. A shaggy, unkempt beard adorned his many chins and a stained white tee shirt, dirty blue jeans, and scuffed boots adorned his flabby body. With a grunt he slammed the car door closed then turned and followed the cracked walkway that ran through the knee high grass to the front door. The house he entered was in desperate need of a paint job, its roof missing shingles like teeth in a hockey player's smile. Bill didn't care about any of that. He was home and he was glad to be there. Time to relax, drink more than a few beers, and forget about the hard day's work behind him.

  "Honey, I'm home!" he said as he slammed the door closed, kicked off his boots and waded in his holey socks through the trash - mainly pizza boxes, fast food wrappers, and aluminum cans - that littered the floor.

  "Yeah, I heard ya comin' down the street," said his wife Babs, the light of his life, the apple of his eye. In this case, it was more like a watermelon. Much like Bill, his better half was a bit on the plump side. Her hair was long, dark, and greasy, her face a network of pimples. She was already seated on the couch watching TV, an industrial sized bag of chips and a two liter bottle of soda on the cluttered coffee table before her. "Now be quiet, Jerry's got a transvestite love triangle on."

  "Yes, dear," said Bill with a smile as he headed to the kitchen, grabbed a Milwaukee's Best from the fridge, came back into the living room and sat on the couch next to Babs. It was good to be home. "Where are the kids?"

  "Out back playin'. Now, hush, I'm trying to watch this."

  Bill gave her a peck on the cheek, cracked open his beer, sat back and watched TV with his wife. No doubt about it, it was good to be home.

  *

  Bill Junior and Bobby Joe were out back by the pool or "Satan's shitter" as someone else had recently referred to it. An appropriate nickname if ever there was one. To say it was in need of a cleaning was to say that Jeffrey Dahmer had been a bit maladjusted. This pool was downright disgusting. It was an in-ground job and its surface was completely green with algae. No water could be seen whatsoever. Floating on the algae was a number of brown leaves from a nearby tree, a plethora of candy wrappers and, of course, beer and soda cans. The Plummers obviously thought it was quite the treat having this gigantic trash can in their back yard. Near the edge of the pool in what was presumably the shallow end stood the silver handle of the pool brush, its lower half submerged beneath the pea colored surface. It looked as though it had been there a long time.

  Bill Junior was playing with his chemistry set and his little sister, Bobby Joe, was watching. Patches, the family beagle, trotted lazy circles around the two chubby siblings. They were seated at the patio table on the pool's cement deck. Bill Junior was mixing chemicals at random just to see what would happen. Bobby Joe was hoping for an explosion of some kind. The chemistry set had been a present from last Christmas which had sat in a closet untouched until now, the middle of July. It was proving to be a long, hot, mostly boring summer vacation. A perfect time to break out a discarded gift, see if it might have some entertainment value. After an hour of mixing different colored powders and liquids together with no discernible results, Bill Junior decided that it didn't.

  "Aw, fuck this!" he said and threw everything into the pool.

  "Oooo, I'm gonna tell mom what you said!" his little sister declared with glee then jumped up from her seat and ran over to the sliding glass door that led into the house.

  "Go ahead, you little brat!" said Bill Junior as she disappeared inside. Kid sisters! The curse of eighth-grade-boys-on-the-verge-of-manhood everywhere! One of these days, he decided, he was going to kill her. "Probably give me a medal..."

  Thunder rumbled in the distance. He looked out over the back yard and the roofs of the houses beyond, saw
dark clouds gathering on the horizon. Another Florida thunderstorm. At least there was something to look forward to. He loved storms, loved the sound of the rain lashing the outside of the house, the whistling of the wind. Storms were magical things, transformed the world into a different place, a dark and dreary realm in which the monsters from all those scary comic books he liked to read might possibly come to life. And hopefully eat his sister. Yeah, he wished it would rain every day. That would be just fine with him.

  "Come on," said Bill Junior to Patches. "Don't want to get caught out in the rain, do you?" The dog followed the boy into the house where his mother gave him a stern talking to about his language and sent him to his room.

  *

  The storm that rolled in that night was the kind that could make a person believe in ancient gods and that they were awfully pissed off about something. Bill Junior sat at his bedroom window and witnessed the tempest's wrath. Thunder boomed and lightning split the sky. The wind howled like a wounded beast and the rain battered the outside of the house like a horde of malevolent spirits that wanted in.

  The window at which Bill Junior sat faced out onto the back yard. He watched in fascination as a bolt of lightning shot down out of the nearly black sky and struck a telephone pole the top of which was just visible on the next street over. Sparks exploded from where contact was made. Thunder rattled the window before him, made him think for a moment that the glass might break.

  "Whoa, that was a close one," he told himself.

  The next one was even closer. It went straight for the swimming pool where the handle of the pool brush, jutting up from the water like an accusatory finger, acted as a lightning rod. The ensuing roar made him jump back from the window.

  "Holy shit!" he exclaimed, forgetting for the moment why he had been confined to his room. He slapped a hand over his mouth, waited for the sound of his mother's heavy footfalls to come down the hall. After a few moments, when he heard no sign of his mother's approach, he let out a sigh, realized that he hadn't been heard over the cacophony outside. He approached the window again.

  On and on it went for another couple of hours. Somebody's car alarm wailed in the distance. "This is awesome..." At that moment Bill Junior couldn't have cared less that his TV privileges had been revoked for the evening. With a show like this going on, who needed television?

  If he had had any inkling of the horror that would soon be unleashed he may have felt quite differently about the whole situation.

  *

  It was an accident waiting to happen. The algae ridden pool... The discarded chemical set... The blast of electricity... A recipe for disaster. A mad scientist could not have created a better set of circumstances. Strange molecules were fused within that vile pool then they began to split and multiply at an incomprehensible rate. It was just past eleven when the Plummer household turned in for the evening and by then there was a strange new lifeform the size of a man's fist floating out near the center of the pool. By two in the morning it was the size of a basketball and had started sprouting tentacles. By sunrise it was as big as a beach ball and could propel itself around its birthing tank with relative ease.

  Patches was the first being to encounter it. Bill senior always let the dog out first thing in the morning before he left for work so that it could go shit in the yard. And that morning Patches was really ready to go. He had been fed half a can of chili the night before. Truth be told he hadn't been able to hold it all. If the house was ever cleaned - and that was an unimaginably huge if - then the Plummers would find a nice little surprise hidden beneath a pile of newspapers next to the couch. And beneath an old pizza box over near the entertainment center. And a little more in the corner beneath a hamburger wrapper. Hell, the fact that there was carpet somewhere down under all that trash would probably come as an even bigger surprise.

  The moment the sliding glass door closed behind Patches he knew that something was wrong. He could sense it. There was something bad nearby. He stood near the door not wanting to take another step away from it. But the need to relieve himself of the rest of last evening's meal was strong in him, strong enough to conquer his sense of unease. He really had to go. And after he went he always liked to bury it. Couldn't very well do that over here on the cement. He started to walk over to the yard. To do that he had to pass near the pool. About halfway there he heard a splash. He stopped and looked at the pool. Something was bobbing up and down on its surface as though it had recently been under the water and had just come up for air. If, in fact, whatever it was even needed air. Maybe it had just been hiding, lying in wait.

  With a quick movement the thing pushed itself toward the edge of the pool then lashed out with two of its long, slimy, ropelike appendages which quickly ensnared the cowering dog. Patches let out a pathetic little whimper, took a dump all over the deck where he stood and was then unceremoniously yanked into the water.

  *

  "Now where is that dumb dog?" wondered Babs as she pushed open the sliding glass door and stepped outside. "Patches!" she yelled, thinking that maybe he had run off into one of the neighbor's yards. Probably found a bitch he's sticking it to. The Plummers had never gotten around to getting Patches fixed much to the chagrin of many other local dog owners. Bill would often joke about how he needed to take Patches down to the walk-in clinic for his weekly penicillin shot. "Son-of-a-bitch is a bigger whore than Jenny Itchums ever thought about being. You remember Jenny from back in high school, don't ya?"

  Of course Babs remembered Jenny. They had been best friends. Jenny was the one who had introduced Babs to Bill. Introduced him to a lot more'n that, I'm sure... That was all in the past, though. Bill was all hers now, had been for many years. Eat your heart out, Jenny Itchums. The momentary happiness the thought gave her was dampened by the irritation caused by the dog's disappearance. The stupid animal was asking for a grade A butt whoopin' whenever he decided to turn up.

  "Dammit, Patches!" she yelled.

  That's when she heard the splash. She had been shouting in the direction of the next door neighbor's house and had to turn to see the cause of the unexpected sound.

  "What in God's name..."

  Something was floating in the swimming pool. Well, there was always something floating in the swimming pool but this was definitely something different. And it was big. Whatever it is it ain't right. The thing looked like a fleshy beach ball. Were those veins running randomly over its surface? And what the hell was that, a dog snout? No way. There was no way that thing was alive. That's when the snout opened and emitted a pathetic little whine, the exact same sound Patches would make after a whippin' with the newspaper.

  "Good Lord..."

  Fear washed over Babs like a cold shower. She backed up until her sizable rear end came in contact with the sliding glass door. That put about eight feet of concrete in between her and the edge of the pool which the creature swam over to with amazing swiftness. Her hand reached out behind her, fingers trembling, dancing over the glass, reaching desperately for the door handle. She couldn't take her eyes off the thing in the pool. It made no attempt to climb up onto the deck. Surely she was too far away for it to cause her any harm. Just open the door and go into the house... Just open the freakin' door and go into the house... Her fingers finally found the handle.

  That's when a tentacle shot out, easily covered the distance from pool to door, and wrapped itself around Babs's flabby wrist. She screamed as her hand was yanked away from the handle, as she was pulled off balance and fell face first onto the cement deck. Her chin hit with a resounding crack! Nine of her teeth were knocked loose. The pain was a terrible thing but paled in comparison to the sheer terror that consumed her. A half dozen more tentacles quickly wrapped themselves about her body. Shrieking through her bloody mouth she was pulled headlong toward the scum covered pool's dark green waters. Not like this! she thought. Dear God, not like this! Then she went into the water. On this day apparently God wasn't listening.

  *

  Bill Junior
slept through it all. The screaming had occurred practically right outside his window and it hadn't disturbed him at all. "Damn boy could sleep through an earthquake," his mother would sometimes say. And it was probably true. But, hell, when a boy was having the kind of dream Bill Junior was having what would be the point in waking up? It was the type of dream that might star a famous actress or model or maybe a cute girl from one of his classes, the kind that would make him hide his underwear at the bottom of the clothes basket once he got out of bed. Which he eventually did around half past ten that morning. Ah, the beauty of summer vacation. No alarm going off at some ridiculous hour.

  He threw on a pair of shorts and a sweatshirt, walked across the hall to the bathroom to take a piss, then wandered out to the kitchen to make breakfast. He was starving. That dream of his had apparently worked up quite an appetite. Nothing a few bowls of cereal and a slice of cold pizza wouldn't fix. And maybe a microwave burrito. Yes, in many ways Bill Junior was definitely his father's son.

  Strange how quiet the house was. Dad was at work and Bobby Joe had spent the night at a friend's house. But the fact that his mother wasn't seated on the couch watching one of her countless talk shows struck Bill Junior as rather odd. And where was Patches? Maybe his mother had taken the dog for a walk. The image made him laugh out loud. His mother out walking? More likely she'd been abducted by aliens. Ah, well, it was a small mystery that would have to wait because if he didn't get something in his stomach soon he was convinced he would fall over and die.

  Half an hour later he was done eating and there was still no sign of his mother. Or Patches. He kept expecting the dog to start clawing at the sliding glass door, wanting to get in, had convinced himself that his mother had taken the animal outside with her after all. Leaving his dishes on the kitchen counter, he walked back to his parents' bedroom to make sure his mother wasn't still in bed. After that he put on some tennis shoes and went out into the front yard, took a look around, saw no sign of mother or dog. Across the street old Wilbur was getting his newspaper from the edge of the street so Bill Junior shouted at him, asked if he had seen his mother at all that morning. The old man simply shook his head and scowled in response then headed back into his house.