by Shannon West
“Noah,” Gran said, “it’s rude to keep Ms. Reinhart standing. Why don’t you come on in and have a seat, Adrianna?” she asked loudly. “We’d just love to sit you down and talk to you.”
“Ooh,” Adrianna cooed, whirling around and holding out a hand for the book. “You want to make a deal with me?”
“I’d like to discuss it, yes.”
I swore I heard a faint rumble of thunder off in the distance, though the sky outside had been a clear, summery blue a few minutes ago.
“What kind of deal?” Nick asked, still sounding groggy and struggling to sit up, while I doggedly held onto him and tried to hold him down. I was terrified the demon—for that’s what I now believed this creature had to be—would hurt him.
“Mrs. Smith, you need to let me handle this,” Nick was saying, but Gran had stepped forward to stand in front of us and reached for Adrianna’s arm. “Come on, honey. Sit down. We need to talk.”
“Gran,” I cautioned, but Adrianna was already pulling away, making a hissing sound just like a cat. She pulled back her hand like she was going to hit my grandmother, so I jumped to my feet and tried to shove the creature away. Instead, the thing grabbed my arm and pulled me back against it with hard hands like claws of iron. It was so strong, I couldn’t break free.
The demon wrapped its arm around my neck and pulled me against its body. A smell I could only describe as being like musty rotten eggs almost choked me, and I struggled to get away, but the big hand around my throat was like a steel vice.
All this happened in a matter of seconds, and I heard Nick cry out and struggle again to get to his feet. The demon held onto me effortlessly with one hand, while at the same time, shoving my grandmother backward so hard she literally flew back into Nick. He made a little “oof” sound and they both slammed into the wall again. Nick took the brunt of it, thank goodness, or my gran could have been badly hurt. As it was, the two of them lay slumped and stunned at the base of the wall for a few seconds.
“Give me that book!” the demon screeched in my ear.
Nick was coming to and trying his best to scramble to his feet and pull my grandmother up at the same time. He got back to one knee and shouted angrily at Adrianna.
“Let him go! What the hell are you doing to him?” He got all the way to his feet and reached for me, but the demon moved backward so fast it was like a blur and made me slightly dizzy. And here’s the thing—we glided across the basement floor.
“Kiss my ass, you cocksucker!” the demon yelled at Nick.
It glanced back at my gran. “I’m ready to make a deal with you now, you old bitch. A simple one. His life for the book.”
The demon’s hand tightened around my neck and I made a gasping sound. Nick surged toward us, but my tiny, fierce little grandmother, moving faster than I’d ever seen her, somehow got in front of him. She threw herself into the fray across the small space that separated us, jerking off the cross necklace she was wearing. She reached over my head to jam the tiny gold cross up against the demon’s forehead. I heard the flesh sizzle by my ear, and the thing screamed in real pain, as Gran started beating it over the head with the book.
“Get off him, you bitch!” my gran kept yelling. And then suddenly there was a clatter on the stairs and Rose and Claudia rushed in. Salt began raining down on us, along with splashes of cold water. It was Rose and Claudia, both of whom had run in to join the fight. Claudia jumped in front of a stunned Nick, clutching her agate pin and using a small green water pistol to shoot the demon, who was ducking down behind me, incongruously hissing in pain as the water splashed over it. All the while, Rose was throwing handfuls of salt in the air to fall over us like a white shower, the tiny pellets of salt stinging my face and going down in my shirt. My gran was still brandishing her tiny cross necklace, and still banging the demon over the head with the book.
The demon, who had clearly had enough, suddenly hurled me toward them with a loud cry of rage and turned to run, but Rose threw a big, glass candleholder at it and I heard a solid thunk as it hit the demon in the back of the head. It had flung me across the room, and I plowed into poor Nick, who had just managed to move his grandmother behind him. He was able to grab me as I literally flew into him, but it had caught him off-guard, so we both went hurtling over backward to the floor—the third time now for him, with me landing beside him in a heap on the floor.
The air was full of cursing and screeching, and it was like being in the middle of some crazy, chaotic cat fight, or maybe some exorcist scene in a movie, except this one was all too terrifyingly real. I heard my gran yell, “The power of God compels you! The power of God compels you!” like the priest did in The Exorcist. She said it over and over and with one final shriek, the demon, who still wore Adrianna Reinhart’s face, disappeared in a cloud of black, roiling, evil-smelling smoke, the only sign left of where it had been standing.
We were silent and shell-shocked at first after she disappeared. Feeling faint and dazed, I sat up and glanced over at Nick, who was looking back at me with a frown of concern and clutching my hand.
“Noah?” he said from a long way away. “You don’t look so good. Are you okay, baby? Speak to me.”
And that’s the last thing I remembered before everything went black.
Chapter Nine
“Wave some of these smelling salts under his nose, dear,” Claudia was saying as someone held my head in their lap and gently tapped my cheek.
“Hitting him in the face like that ain’t gonna work,” Gran said, hectoring from somewhere over me. “Use those smelling salts. If I could get down there, I’d do it. But then I couldn’t get back up again.”
“I’m not hitting him…and that stuff smells awful,” Nick said from just above me, his voice sounding ragged and irritated. “He’ll wake up in just a second.” He tapped my cheek again and leaned in close to my ear. “Wake up, Noah. Come on, baby.”
Baby? Damn, I must have hit my head harder than I thought on the way down or else it was wishful thinking. I think it was twice now he’d called me that. I opened my eyes, blinking up at him. He was leaning over me, his eyes dark with concern. The ladies were hovering over his shoulder, and my gran looked worried and tense. She saw me open my eyes, and her face cleared right away.
“Oh thank goodness! I thought that demon had you for sure.”
“The demon!” I shouted and grabbed Nick’s shirtfront. “Oh my God!”
“Settle down before you pass out again,” Nick said. “I know exactly how you feel…I wasn’t exactly prepared for it either. I still think I must have been dreaming.”
“It was no dream unless we all had it together.”
Nick shook his head. “But demons don’t exist.”
“Do you believe in angels in heaven?” my grandmother asked.
“Well, yeah, I guess so. Sure.”
“Then why not demons?”
He stared at her for a long moment and then deflated with a quick huff of breath. “Okay.”
“I’m still freaking out,” I said, trying to scoot a little closer to Nick without him noticing. “Why aren’t you freaking out like I am?”
He turned and gave me a little smile. “Believe me, I am, only mostly on the inside. I’ve learned to hide it well over the years, but go ahead and consider me freaked the hell out.” He looked up at his grandmother. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about this.”
“Tell you? I could hardly believe it myself. And you know you wouldn’t have believed me. You’d have just told me I was crazy and hauled me off to my doctor and both of you would think I had that Oldtimers disease.”
“It’s Alzheimers, nana, but you’re right.” He stood up and bent to kiss her cheek. “I shouldn’t doubt you.” He sighed and gazed around the circle to include my gran and Rose. “None of you. But ladies, I just can’t wrap my brain around any of this. My mind is blown.”
“Tell him how it happened, Gran.”
“Well, it’s like this…” My grandmother launc
hed into a recitation similar to what Rose had told me a few days before—the same story of old books from the flea market, witches in Salem and dead husbands. It was just as hard to believe the second time I heard it, even with Claudia and Rose adding in little comments and clarifications, but this time I’d seen the demon with my own eyes. I had to believe in that proof, if nothing else.
Nick glanced down at me, still on the floor. “Are you going to stand up and walk, or do I need to carry you?”
“Where am I going?”
“Out of this basement for starters. It smells bad in here.” He glanced over at Gran. “No offense, ma’am.”
“None taken. It’s the smoke the demon always leaves behind…brimstone, I think. They call it sulphur nowadays.” She motioned for us to follow her. “Let’s go upstairs and have some more tea. We can decide what to do next.”
Nick extended a hand. I grasped it and he heaved me up. “Are you sure she didn’t hurt you?” Nick asked, holding onto me a second or two longer than necessary.
“Just scared me half to death. Thanks for catching me.”
Before he could answer, my grandmother came over and took my arm so we could help each other up the stairs. We all trooped back to the living room and Gran and the others bustled around making us another glass of their “tea.” I was grateful for mine and took a big gulp. Someone had been liberal with the bourbon and it burned all the way down. I saw Nick raise his eyebrows in surprise when he sipped his, but he never said a word for almost five minutes, letting us all have a chance to compose ourselves a little. Still, I don’t think I was ready yet when Gran fixed both me and Nick with a flinty stare.
“What are you going to do about this, sheriff?”
“Well, Ms. Smith, I’m not sure. I’m still about halfway convinced we all shared a hallucination down there. Either that or I need to turn myself in for a pysch evaluation.”
Gran made a rude noise. “That was no hallucination and you know it. Three people are dead, Sheriff.”
“I know that,” he snapped and then blew out a breath. “And I’m sorry, but this is all a little much to take in.”
“Well, you better get up to speed, Sheriff. We didn’t banish the demon yet, and if we don’t figure out how to do that, more people are going to die. Including us.”
****
It was late in the evening before I managed to calm down enough to make my way into the kitchen to eat some dinner. I stood in front of an open refrigerator door for a while, and finally decided to heat up the chicken casserole Gran had made earlier. I thought about drinking the rest of the bottle of bourbon, to wash it down, but not that much of it was left. Gran said she’d get another bottle tomorrow. She and Rose had decided it would be a good idea for Claudia to sleep over, just in case the demon decided to come back. So the three of them were in the den watching TV. Nick had left for the station earlier in the evening, just kissing me on the cheek before he left and saying he wasn’t sure when he’d be back.
I was at the kitchen table, rearranging the casserole and some salad around on my plate, when the doorbell rang. Warily I went to the door—Gran and Rose and Claudia all gathered in the doorway of the den. We were all pretty gun shy after I’d let Arianna get back in the house earlier that day. I looked through the peep hole and sagged with relief to see Nick on the doorstep, looking impatient.
“It’s Nick,” I said, and took off the chain across the door.
“Wait!” Gran yelled. “Sure it looks like the sheriff. But what if it’s the demon in disguise?”
I made a scoffing sound and then hesitated. What if it was?
“Ask him to say the Lord’s Prayer. Demons can’t say it,” Claudia said confidently.
Nick pounded on the door. “Noah? Let me in!”
“Okay, but can you-can you maybe say the Lord’s Prayer before I do?”
“What?”
“Please. To prove to us you’re not the demon! It can disguise itself.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” He sighed, then, “Okay. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name…”
“That’s good enough!” Claudia pronounced. “It’s him.”
I opened the door, and he pushed past me, turning to look questioningly at me. “What was that all about?”
“The demon can take any form. Uh, according to what my gran says.”
“Uh huh.”
“I didn’t know if you’d come back.”
“I left something important to me here.”
“Your nana. Yeah, she’s fine. They’re watching TV.”
He leaned over and brushed my lips with his. “Not just my nana.”
I blushed as Claudia came over to give him a hug, and he kissed her forehead before looking up at the rest of us. “We need to talk.”
“Have you eaten anything yet?” Gran said. “I made a casserole and a salad for lunch, but we never got around to eating it. You can eat and talk at the same time.”
“Thank you. I could definitely eat.”
“That’s settled then.”
The ladies herded him into the kitchen and sat him down beside me at the table. They went into “grandma mode” and soon Claudia was filling his plate, while Gran fixed his salad and Rose cut him a piece of pie. As for me, I played footsie with him under the table.
“Hey, I didn’t know we had ice box lemon pie in the refrigerator,” I protested, as Rose cut him a slice.
“I don’t know why not. You stood there in front of the refrigerator for ten minutes just staring into it. I swear, men can’t see anything, even if it’s right in front of their noses.”
“I might have to agree with that,” Nick said softly, gazing across the table at me. “I’ll share my piece.”
I smiled at him and I heard someone sigh. It could have been me. “Noah,” he said, “I’d like to talk to you, um, privately after we discuss this thing, if that’s all right?”
I immediately got flustered and spilled my glass of milk, which meant Gran had to grab for paper towels and Rose and Claudia nudged each other knowingly.
“Okay, sure,” I said, sounding a little ragged. I could feel my face flame up hot and ducked my head, concentrating on the plate of food in front of me. Damn, how I hated all this uncertainty. If he had something to say, why couldn’t he just come out and say it and not leave me dying here? I tried to tamp down my expectations, and not think—again—about how he’d called me baby. It probably meant nothing. Or else it meant everything, and I was dying to find out which one it was.
“In the meantime, ladies,” he said, glancing up at them. “We need to come up with a plan to get rid of this demon of yours.”
Gran gripped the back of a chair. “Y-you mean you’ll help us?”
“It’s killing the citizens of Indian Springs. I think I sort of have to.”
I reached over and gave his hand a quick squeeze. I couldn’t help it. He rewarded me with a shy, surprised half a smile. It was the best half a smile I ever saw.
“Now you’re talking!” Gran said, and went over to the bread box to get the book out. Nick looked down at it with interest.
“This is it?”
“Yep. Elizabeth Seegar’s journal, slash spell book, slash grimoire. It’s all in here.”
“Tell me the story again of how somebody found this demon in the first place.”
“Well,” Rose said, having a seat at the table. “This lady—our ancesteor—called Elizabeth Seegars. She was a witch, you see. Not a mean one, but a good witch. That is, until her husband died from a farm accident. It was a bad one, from what she said—or didn’t exactly say. He was cut all to pieces. No wonder they thought it was the work of the devil. She thought if she could summon a demon, she’d make a deal with him and give him her soul if he gave her back the man she loved.’
“She talked to her two sisters, both of whom were old wise woman, aka witches, in her village named Sarah Ayers, and Jane Hawkins and somehow the three of them came up with a way to conjure up a demon. Per
sonally, I think it has to do with finding out the demon’s name, because Emma Mae had that book for all those years and nothing ever happened until we said its name. When Emma Mae was making her pie, she said it and it somehow called him up. He said, ‘Thrice you have called me.’ And then he killed her.”
Nick nodded. “Thrice…three times. Did she say his name three times?”
“No, but the three of us did. Me and Rose and Emma Mae.”
“The power of three,” I said. “I’ve heard of that from somewhere before too.”
“Well, Emma Mae started it by finding the name in the book. Then Rose and I each repeated it and next thing you know we had our hands full of demon.”
“What name did you say?”
Gran glanced around nervously, but Nick shook his head. “I think it should be okay to say it once.”
“Okay. It was Falalaba.”
On cue, there was a distant sound of thunder, and we all looked at each other.
“Go on with your story,” Nick said, his voice calm. He was good in a crisis, it seemed, which is what a sheriff would need to be, I guess.
“The demon told Elizabeth Seegars it was beyond his power to bring back her husband but offered her other things if she’d let him go.”
“What did she do?”
“She stuck to her guns and demanded he bring her husband back. And, after a while, he did. But the husband had been gone too long and what he brought back to her…wasn’t her husband. So she killed her poor husband again and then killed herself.”
“Shit.”
“I know. The other two sisters took the book then, and did a spell to protect themselves from the demon, by keeping it inside the book. But now it’s out and we don’t know how to put it back in.”
“Elizabeth Seegars said its name had power, so we think that’s how you three ladies released it again,” Nick said. “Now we have to figure out a way to banish it or put it back in the book. But it’s dangerous. The thing has already killed three women, so just by saying its name and getting it here doesn’t solve the problem. We also need to know how to banish it forever. I think the salt and the holy water and all, while effective, doesn’t get rid of it completely.”