Raising Hell

by Shannon West

  “Well, of course we were all sorry to hear about her health problems,” Rose said. “And maybe I was a little bit excited to finally get my hands on that recipe. She started to make the pie, for old times’ sake, she said, and then she started feeling poorly with her arthritis and all. So your gran took over and I helped her.”

  “The rightful owners of the book, boy,” Gran said. “And the ones who had inherited the magic.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right. We were making the pie, and then we made the mistake of saying the demon’s name.”

  “How did Falalala or whatever you said, come up in the conversation?”

  “Falalaba. And well,” Rose chimed in. “Emma Mae accidentally said it first. She was reading out the recipe to us from the book and said, ‘How do you say this? Falalaba?’”

  I made a scoffing sound. “This is absurd.”

  “No, listen. Then I repeated it. “I said, “no, I think it’s Falalaba, with the accent on the last syllable. And then your gran repeated it that way too. Anyway, a big black cloud of smoke that smelled like sulphur came up out of that book and swirled all around the room and turned into a-a creature! It was tall and stood on its hind legs, with furry legs like a goat and horns on its ugly head.”

  Gran nodded, “I saw it. You can believe it or not, Noah, but we’re in grave danger from that thing. It killed poor Emma Mae, right in front of us. She jumped up and startled him, and he went swirling right over to her, slammed his hand on her head and gave her a stroke. She fell down like a poleaxed steer!”

  Rose nodded, her face angry. “It wasn’t right. She only had a few months left, but she deserved to have those months, and not have them taken away from her like that.” She took my hand in hers. “It’s true, honey. All of it’s true. And now we think that thing will come after all of us, one by one, until we release him from the book!”

  “Rose…” I shook my head. “Gran,” I said, turning to appeal to her. “You can’t believe this.”

  I glanced back and forth between them, trying to catch them winking at each other, or making some sign that they were just pranking me, but they both just stared steadily back at me.

  I blew out a long breath. “Okay, I’ll play along for just a second. Let’s go over this again. You’re saying that you guys and Emma Mae Millican ‘accidentally’ summoned a demon while baking a pie?”

  “Well,” Gran said, “yes. We knew the demon was inside the book. It said so in Elizabeth Seegar’s journal, but we didn’t know that much about it. We didn’t think of it as dangerous, exactly. I mean, he helped make pies taste good, after all. And we didn’t know about him. Like how to get him to come out or even better, how to get him to go away. Their names have power over them and three is a magical number.”

  “Uh huh.”

  Rose took up the story. “Listen up, Noah. We told you how it happened. The first time we said the name, something happened. Falalaba…” An ominous boom of thunder outside made us all jump as a cloud went over the sun. I turned to look at them.

  “Like that?”

  “Yes.” Rose got a scared look on her face, looking over her shoulder.

  “Stop it Rose! Don’t say that word again!” Gran yelled at her. All we know is that demon came boiling up out of that book and…” She slammed her hand down on the table. “Bam!”

  I jumped a little and frowned at her. “Gran, don’t do that!”

  “Sorry. But that’s when happened. It even told us that we summoned it, we think. It said, ‘Thrice you called my name!’ And then it flew across the room and hit Emma Mae.”

  “That’s right,” my gran said. “And then it came for the rest of us.”

  “What? This is crazy!”

  “It’s the truth. Pearl got up and threw her margarita at it and the glass hit it in the head. He roared at her and turned around to have a go at her. That’s when I threw the salt at it.”

  “Salt? What salt?”

  “For the margaritas, dear, please try to keep up. There was a whole bag of salt on the table, and I threw a handful of it at the demon. It hit the thing right in the eyes, and it howled and screamed and clawed at its eyes and then it started to swirl around and went back up in smoke.”

  “From the salt.”

  “Yes! I guess so. It went all over the demon. I tried to read up on it some and I found a lot about it. Salt superstitions have a long history going all the way back to ancient times. You know how when you spill salt, it’s considered bad luck, so you throw some over your left shoulder, because that’s where the evil spirits lurk.”

  “Oh good Lord.”

  “No, listen. In the Bible, it says salt is a symbol of incorruptibility. Churches were consecrated with salt and holy water.”

  I felt like my head was reeling, but they kept talking. “Salt is contrary to the nature of Demons, who try to corrupt and destroy us. Best of all, salt makes a magical boundary. It can be sprinkled around a circle to protect the ones inside it. So we think when Rose threw that salt at the demon it scared the dickens out of him, and he turned tail and ran.”

  I blew out a long breath. “Okay. Let’s say I believe all this sh…all this. You got rid of the demon with salt. So that’s good then, right? The demon is gone. Scared away by the salt?”

  Gran shook her head. “But not for long, dear. It came back. In fact, you’ve met the demon.”

  “What? When?”

  “At the funeral home and at the repass. Emma Mae’s so-called niece? Adrianna? That was no niece! And that was no woman either! That was the demon.”

  ****

  An hour or so later, and we’d finally finished cleaning up the basement and my headache was almost gone. I had a garbage bag full of sticky, messy dough and melted butter and my grandmother had gone upstairs to hang up all her robes. “All this still doesn’t explain what the hell y’all were doing down here in the basement with the biscuit dough,” I said, wiping at my hands with a paper towel.

  “Oh, that,” Rose said. “Well, we were trying to get rid of the demon.”

  “With raw biscuits?”

  “We tried to bury the book first. That’s why we broke into the funeral home. To put the book inside the casket with Emma Mae. We thought we could hide it in there under her body and then they’d bury her and the demon would be trapped forever. She had a metal vault, you know, instead of concrete. We thought that might help keep the demon inside the grave.”

  I stopped what I was doing and stared at her in amazement. “So that’s why you were at the funeral home! That’s why you molested Emma Mae’s corpse.”

  “We didn’t molest her. I don’t know why all you men keep saying that. We just lifted her body up to slide the book in, that’s all. But then Claudia scared Pearl, and…you know the rest. I guess we might have set off some kind of alarms.”

  “Oh, you think?”

  “Don’t be rude, sweetie. Anyway, we were arrested by that deputy before we could get the book inside the casket, so Pearl just put it back in her purse.”

  “And then you decided to buy biscuit dough. How was that supposed to help?”

  “We didn’t do it until you told the demon our address and how to find us! We were desperate!”

  Since I had been the one to tell Adrianna our address, I didn’t have much to say to that.

  “Yeah, I did tell Adrianna.”

  “Who is really the demon!”

  “And she came by here you said?”

  “Oh yes, the creature showed up, all right. Right in the middle of our meeting to figure out what to do about it. It just suddenly appeared in the middle of the circle. Scared us all half to death. Sylvia fainted dead away. But the joke was on the demon! We had laid our salt down around the outside of the circle, so when it landed there in the middle of us, it began to burn him and he couldn’t get out. The demon screamed something awful and went back up in smoke again. So after it left and we pulled ourselves together, we started looking up ways on the internet to banish a
demon and we found out about the monks in Tibet.”

  “The monks? In Tibet?”

  Rose nodded. “See, we were going to buy some modeling clay, but it was too expensive and it might have hardened too fast. Anyway, Pearl thought we could maybe use the canned biscuits instead.”

  “For what, Rose? You’ve lost me again.”

  “To make our effigy. See, we looked up ways to rid yourself of a demon and you’d be surprised at how little we found about it.”

  “No, not really.”

  She ignored me and went on. “In Tibet, the monks do a ritual once a year to purge their towns of demons. They attract the evil spririts with the effigy and then keep them captive inside it long enough to throw them in a fire and burn them up. They make theirs out of barley and butter, so we thought this might be close enough. It’s all symbolic anyway, Noah.”

  “Yeah, I got that. I don’t see any fire though. How were you going to burn it up?”

  “We thought we’d see if it worked first and then if it did, we could start a fire in the iron stove that’s in the basement, douse it with gasoline and burn it.”

  I opened my mouth to reply and realized there were no words. Rose angled me a look to see how I was taking her news.

  “And the tambourine and bongo drums?”

  “The monks ring bells and bang on drums during the ceremony.”

  “Ah,” I said, nodding sagely. “And the robes?”

  “Well, we didn’t have any traditional ones, of course.”

  “Of course.” I sat down and put my head in my hands.

  “Oh, don’t take on so,” my grandmother said, coming back into the room. “It might have worked if you two boys hadn’t interrupted our service.”

  I looked up at her incredulously. “Gran, surely you realize how crazy all this sounds.”

  “Yes, but it’s all true.” I just shook my head and she folded her arms across her chest. “You just wait, Noah. I’ll find a way to convince you and then you’re going to owe me a big apology.”

  Chapter Seven

  The next morning, after fortifying myself with multiple cups of coffee, I went down to the sheriff’s office to see Nick, like he’d told me to. I wasn’t looking forward to the coming interview, and not just because of the uncomfortable subject. I had gotten used to not speaking to Nick over the years, except for lately taking his order, and I thought it would be best for both of us to leave it that way. I certainly had no desire to argue with him again, because the last time we’d done that, it resulted in our not seeing each other again for ten years or so.

  I had gone to see him that last time to tell him goodbye. He was leaving early the next morning for Basic Training, and we hadn’t talked much since the night I’d given him that blow job. And the way I saw it, I had three ways I could go. I could have a talk with Nick before he left and be honest and tell him how much I loved him and how much I always had. Or I could tell him I was sorry about what happened and agree that it would never and should never happen again. Or I could avoid Nick like the plague for a few days until he left for Basic and hope that by the next time I saw him this weirdness between us had gone the hell away.

  That third option didn’t sound too bad, but it was the coward’s way out, and I really wanted him to know how I felt about him before he put himself in harm’s way. If someone told you they loved you, that couldn’t be bad, could it? Even if you didn’t love them back, it was still a compliment, as long as they didn’t make it weird. So even knowing that it could end things between us for good, I still felt like I had to take a chance, because what if something happened to him and I’d never told him how I felt about him? I couldn’t live with that.

  He was packing up his stuff when I arrived and he offered me a beer. He was so excited and nervous to be leaving that I almost didn’t say anything. But I thought I needed to tell him how I really felt about him. So I took a deep breath and told him I loved him.

  He gave me a little punch in the arm and laughed. “I love you too, man. But don’t get so serious. I’ll be okay, and I’ll be home again soon.”

  “No, Nick. I mean, I really love you. I’m in love with you. I have been for a long time.” Saying it out loud was a scary thing. Being in love. It was like having some kind of condition or something.

  I saw right away that he was embarrassed. He rubbed the back of his neck, and he couldn’t meet my eyes. “Damn it, Noah. You know I’m not gay.”

  I must have made a little noise of some kind, or maybe it was the sound of my heart breaking in two, because as I started to turn away, he pulled me back, and put a hand under my chin to look in my eyes. I shut my eyes, because I didn’t want him to see the tears.

  “Damn it, don’t cry. I don’t mean to hurt you. You know I-I care about you.”

  “I just need to go.”

  “No, look, I don’t want to leave it like this between us. What we did that day…the blow job you gave me. I did like it, but I’m still not gay, okay?”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do say so!” His face got that stormy look, and I knew he was angry. But come on, how many one hundred percent straight guys would actually allow a gay man to do that to them? Not only allow it but enjoy it? I was calling bullshit.

  “Whatever, Nick. It doesn’t matter. I can’t make you love me.”

  “Damn it! You always were a pain in the ass!” Nick shouted at me. “Since the first time I ever saw you.”

  We started arguing then, though all I really wanted to do was to crawl off somewhere to lick my wounds.

  “You were my best friend after that, though,” I told him softly, unable to bear the idea that these might be the last words we ever said to each other. “I loved you. I still do.”

  Nick shook his head, but then as I turned to leave, he grabbed me and pulled me to him. “Don’t, Noah. I love you too, just not the way you want me to. Look, if it means that much to you, we can…still do that sometimes.”

  “You mean I’m still welcome to give you the occasional blow job?”

  He had the good grace to look ashamed. “Yeah, if you want to put it like that.”

  “No thanks,” I said, turning away.

  “Goddammit, then leave!” he yelled at me, as I turned and walked out of his life. He followed me out onto the porch and yelled a few more things, tried to call me back, even said he was sorry. But I had to get out of there, because I was dying. At least I felt like I was. I made it to my car, took off for home and I never went back. And I hadn’t seen Nick again until I returned to Indian Springs for my parents’ funeral.

  I dreaded seeing him now. He was like a stranger to me in so many ways, now, but he was also, at the same time, so familiar it made my chest ache. I wished it could be the way it was between us long ago. But if wishes were horses, then beggars could ride, as my gran said, and I clearly wasn’t going anywhere.

  I went inside the station and asked at the desk for the sheriff. The lady there told me to have a seat and she’d tell him I’d arrived. He left me waiting for him for a few minutes, and then the lady at the desk told me I could “go on back. He’s in the big office at the end of the hall.”

  She wasn’t kidding—it was an impressively big office and Nick stood up behind his desk as I came in and told me to have a seat. “Good morning, Noah. Thanks for coming in.”

  “No problem.”

  “I need to tell you I’m going to be recording this interview today.”

  “Oh. Do I need some kind of representation?”

  “A lawyer?” He sighed. “It’s just routine, Noah.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “No, you’re not under arrest.” He sighed. “Go ahead and call someone though if you want to.”

  “No, it’s okay. If you say I don’t need to, I trust you.”

  He gave me an odd little look, but switched on a recorder on his desk and said, “Sheriff Nick Moody and Noah Smith, June twenty-eighth, nine twenty-three a.m. Mr. Smith, can you please tell me again
the circumstances surrounding your discovery of the body of Julie Covington.”

  I sat up straighter and went through the whole thing again. When I finished a few minutes later, he said, “How well did you know the victim?”

  “I don’t really know her at all. I’ve seen her exactly twice in my life. Once at the home of Ms. Millican after the funeral and then again when she came to the shop to eat lunch.”

  “Three times.”

  “What?”

  “You saw her in the dumpster when you found the body.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Three times, then.”

  “Did you see or talk to anyone outside at the back of your shop that morning you found her?”

  “No, no one.”

  “And do you know of anyone who may have wanted to harm the victim?”

  “No, certainly not.”

  “Pretty painless so far, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” I relaxed enough to smile at him. “Did the autopsy report come back on Ms. Covington?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “We have the preliminary report. Cause of death was a fractured skull. Someone struck her hard enough to dislocate her jaw. She then fell against a display case and fractured her skull.”

  “Jesus, that’s a lot of force. Had to be somebody really strong then. And you said it was in her antique store, right? She was killed there?”

  He just gazed at me thoughtfully for a moment and didn’t comment at first. Then he nodded.

  “Her neck was broken though, wasn’t it? The angle of her head when I saw her in the dumpster? It looked like she broke her neck.”

  “Yes, but that was done post mortem. Someone disposed of her body in that dumpster. Which means they may have transported her a block or so down the street and threw her in that dumpster with enough force that it broke her neck. Who do you think could have done that, Nick?”

  “You’re asking me? I have no idea. Don’t you have some CCTV footage that might tell you who was in her shop that afternoon?”