by Mark Henry
“Here it is,” she said, eyeing Wade suspiciously.
Why had he brought that with them?
Was he studying her?
Let it go, she told herself. Let it go. Let it go.
“Let’s Google.” Luce hammered out a few key search parameters, namely: liver patients, cirrhosis, bars, and happy hour and wasn’t at all surprised to see Wilson Demeter’s smiling, slightly sloshed visage pop up on the screen of her iPhone.
“That’s not really how we do things,” Wade began.
But Luce stopped him short by reading the article. “North Portland bartender claims to have crafted a cocktail that cures cirrhosis. Former drunks lined up around the block.”
“That’s him,” Wade said. “Where is the bar?”
Luce read him the address and he jerked the Porsche toward the nearest off ramp, breezing through an area of the city as rundown and bedraggled as every gas station bathroom you’ve ever had the misfortune of entering.
Sadie’s Sugar Saloon, a dry-rot brown shack a few matchsticks away from a small insurance claim, sat squat in a weedy gravel lot packed tight with cars from every social strata, Mercedes mingling with Yugos, a racing green Jaguar nestled in close to a primer gray Dodge Stratus.
All very elicit.
The news report wasn’t exaggerating the appeal of Dr. Demeter’s Miracle Cure and the massive blue tarp with the words Wasting Cirrhosis since Last Thursday painted on in neon-pink paint pretty much cleared up any confusion as to what was happening inside such a lowbrow establishment.
Wade thumbed through his wallet and extracted a business card, fresh and clean as though recently printed. He held it out to Luce. Woodrow Wallace, Health Department Inspector.
“I don’t look like a Woodrow.”
Wade snatched it back, biting back words.
“Can I call you Woody?”
Wade merely blinked in response, then exited the car.
“I’m right behind you.”
If Luce was decorating a business called the Sugar Saloon, she’d insist on large-scale lollipop lamps and saltwater-taffy-wrapped bolsters. The whole place would be set up in a pink circus tent and there’d be confetti and gumdrops and miracles.
Sadie’s Sugar Saloon had none of these things, but it did make up for the lack of imagination with a proliferation of vomit and stacks of dead drunks—or possibly just passed out, but considering the situation, Luce would bet on her first instinct.
Their perp—did they call them that, even?—was behind the bar executing some slight of hand with a cocktail shaker and pouring frothy concoctions for the doe-eyed desperate. A cloud of gloom hung over Wilson Demeter, who was wraith skinny and tall as a phantasm. He wore a jagged grin that couldn’t fool anyone as being remotely benevolent—except for the gathering of cirrhosis-sufferers, of course.
They were all-in, some doubling down.
Luce looked for a place to sit and observe, or whatever it was they needed to do to wait the guy out, but when she turned back to Wade for a little direction, he’d already headed off toward the bar. Luce struggled to break through the crowd and finally wrapped her hand around his bicep. His arm, huge by any measurement, looked even more impressive in her petite grip. When he didn’t acknowledge her, and thinking that she’d barely registered the pressure of a gnat, Luce snagged the hem of his tight tee and tugged hard.
“Jesus. Seriously?” Wade’s brow furrowed angrily, a blaze of orange flared in the brown of his eyes.
Despite the fact that this was the look he probably reserved for his enemies, Luce could have stared into the fire set in those eyes all night—well not all night, the smell of the place would break through eventually, ruining the moment.
“A little on-the-job training wouldn’t be unheard of, would it?” she yelled into his ear.
He rolled his eyes and crouched beside her, his lips very near her ear, his breath tickling her cheek. Luce would be remiss if she didn’t bring to light the minty freshness of that breath—dental hygiene was one of her things and while Wade’s teeth weren’t entirely straight and a gap lived between his right molar and incisor, they looked clean and tartar-free.
Shiny.
“Okay, listen,” he said. “I’m going to go over there and lure him out into the back with the threat of closing him down. Once we’re out there, I’m going to punch him in the neck until he passes out, and then we’re going to throw him in the trunk.”
Luce thought of the Porsche’s tight trunk space already so full with her overnight baggage and Wade’s duffel.
“You think he’ll fit?”
“What?” Wade shrugged. “We’ll just fold the bastard up.”
“And they say you’re not crafty.”
“I have a real knack,” Wade held out his hands like a photographer might, thumbs and index fingers in an L, “for fitting big things in tight spaces.”
Luce swallowed. “Um…”
Wade looked at her strangely and then flushed beet red. “Oh no, I wasn’t. I mean…”
Luce couldn’t resist. “You keep that spatial ability to yourself, Woody.”
“I guess it was too much to ask that you’d let that one slide by.”
“It was like you were giving me a gift.”
Wade cracked a rare smile and turned back toward the bar just as the Pied Piper of bad livers tossed a shaker of ice in the air and caught it atop his measuring glass.
“Gather round sufferers!” Demeter snarled. “Time for another round of Pearly Gates!”
Luce’s mouth dropped open. She hadn’t expected a demon to be the measure of propriety, but even a serial killer can fake sensitivity from time to time. “Jesus,” Luce whistled. “This guy’s got these people sprung.”
“Demons do have a Svengali-like control over the desperate.”
Wade raised his hand to interrupt Luce’s retort and slapped that hand down on the bar, lurching forward and snapping his fingers beside Demeter’s ear. The man’s head jerked violently in their direction and kept going with a laundry list of facial tics. His nostrils flaring, lips curling as though he were midsob, and worst, his tongue flopping inside his mouth like an electrocution.
“Health Department, buddy. Here investigating some complaints and need to do a spot survey. You got somewhere we can talk? Somewhere…” Wade glowered back into the bowels of the bar. “Not so full of the dying?”
Demeter scowled, whistled for a waitress to come take his place. He dropped into a squat and pulled a pitcher of the premade junk from the bar fridge and jerked a thumb toward a door in the back, jogging off without checking to see if they were following.
Wade spun on Luce planting the keys into her palm, “Get the car, now!”
Luce darted through the throngs of people even as Wade made his way out behind Demeter. She burst from the front door and dove into Wade’s car, reaching behind the seat, even as she cranked up the powerful engine. Slipping the car into reverse, Luce gunned the engine and tossed her personnel file into the seat next to her. She drove one-handed and leaned over the shifter to fit her purse with the file, taking the back corner of Sadie’s Sugar Saloon with tires squealing and the car stuttering across the gravel.
The file hidden and her attention back fully to the situation at hand, she swerved to avoid hitting Wade and the bucking figure beneath him. She rolled the window down and leaned out to get a good look at the stream of bile flowing from the bartender’s mouth into a dark puddle in the dirt and worse, a stream of obscenities. At least they sounded like obscenities. Did the Romans curse? They were fond of orgies in pools, youths licking their balls in lieu of soap and semen as face cream so there was no reason to think they kept their language clean.
Also, Luce wondered, why did demons seem to cater to the Catholics? Why not the Pentecostals? Just for shits and giggles. It’s not like anyone speaks Latin anymore, they might as well be speaking in tongues—they could keep the snakes though, ’cause Jesus. Or Chinese, why did the Buddhists get a break? Luce fig
ured that’d go something like this:
“Hey, Sanju, quit it with the damn chanting and incense burning and get to banishing this foul-mouthed demon kid—at least we think he’s foul-mouthed. Does anyone speak Latin?”
Or something along those lines, Luce would probably know more with proper training. She glanced up at the clapboard on the side of the bar. It was peeling away, ashy like the dead end of a cigarette cherry.
“Do you need some help?”
Straddling the man’s wildly bucking midsection, wasn’t doing a thing for boosting Wade’s masculinity. “I got this!” he yelled.
Luce raised an eyebrow.
“What?”
“Nothing, just looks a little, I don’t know…sexual.”
Wade thrust his hand down, circling Demeter’s throat tight and stopping the man midhip thrust. “How about now?” he said.
Luce stared at the man’s startled face, his tongue protruding like a dead cartoon chicken. “Nope,” she said, in all honesty. “Not so much, now.”
Wade lifted the now-unconscious man by the throat and did, indeed, toss him into the trunk, fitting him roughly into the trunk, then pulling him back out, rustling the luggage and then shoving him back in. He slammed the trunk once, twice, and then finally on the third time, Luce heard a startled whelp and then the lid latched.
“See?” Wade said, plopping into the driver’s seat. “Plenty of room.”
“Sounded like it.”
Wade sped to the nearest convenience store, a Quick-E Mart with plywood for windows, and more customers outside than in, none of them coherent enough to notice Wade tossing eight bags of ice into the Porsche and barreling out of the parking lot.
“So we need to get a motel, right?”
“Um, not yet. Lesson one. We’re going to do this one commando-style. A little something I learned from Sister Mary-Agnes.”
Wade drove them a ways out of town, turning into the driveway of the first house he could find with a for-sale sign, no lights on, and an unmowed yard. At a quarter to ten, he figured, there’d at least be one light on if the place wasn’t already vacated.
“Nine times out of ten, you’re safe with this tactic,” he told her. “But just to be safe, we knock.”
Luce followed him across the Saharan lawn to the rickety front porch. The wood creaked and squealed beneath their feet, so soft in spots that Luce felt as though she were sinking.
“Vacant or not,” she whispered. “This place is a teardown.”
Wade rapped his knuckles and pressed his ear to the door, straining to hear.
After cranking the doorknob did no good, Wade shouldered his way in with virtually no effort. Wood splintered, but his quick hand caught the knob and stopped the door from banging and alerting the neighbors.
“Nice.”
Luce followed him inside. The house was no longer furnished, though a few boxes lingered in the stair hall. Wade shot up the stairs and called down. “Looks like this is where the ice needs to come.”
Luce didn’t need to hear anything else. The guy had been in the trunk for a while now, and was likely sweating all over her luggage and spare clothes, also he was probably in pain, but more so, clothes. Seriously.
She stacked the bags of ice outside of the car and grabbing two, headed for the stairs.
The bathroom was awash in newly installed tripod light, spotlighting a porcelain claw-foot tub. Luce pushed past Wade, dropping the bags into the tub before darting back for the others. This time, with Wade’s help, they managed the rest and emptied them into the tub.
“Spread them around and add a little cold water, no more than a few inches though, we don’t want the guy to drown when he comes to.”
“Oh Demeter’s awake. I heard him mumbling back there.”
“Jesus. I was hoping to avoid knocking him out again.”
“Don’t you have some drugs?”
“We do, but mostly just painkillers. The demon’s in control right now, its presence will absorb the majority of the trauma. That’s how many of the hosts survive the repo. That and the fact that I’m going to have you call the ambulance before I begin the exorcision.”
“Exorcision,” Luce repeated, grinning. “Nice. Is that your word for it, or a company thing?”
“That’s all me, baby.”
“Now don’t get cocky with that language mister,” she said. “You’ve already shown me your hand, I’m pretty sure you’re not holding a straight.”
“I was flushed.”
“You certainly were.”
Wade returned to the bathroom with Demeter under one arm and a carpetbag under the other, ratty and threadbare down to the docking. When Wade opened the bag and started pulling things out, Luce began to feel the reality of what was about to happen settle in.
Alcohol. Gauze. Bandages. Pads. There were syringes and a metal box containing at least a dozen scalpels, shiny as a jeweler’s display.
“Strip him down, would ya?” Wade called over his shoulder, pulling the final two articles from the bag, a bottle of clear liquid embossed with a cross and a crucifix.
Luce winced at the prone figure at her feet, long legs tangled up and one shoe missing. The man’s big toe protruded from a hole in his sock and she noticed he’d recently stubbed it, the half moon of a bruise persisted under the nail bed.
It somehow humanized a man that had been slowly poisoning the already dying for several nights already. Luce had to remind herself that this wasn’t him, he’d been taken over and that they were about to free him from captivity.
That only worked a little bit though to ease her discomfort at stripping him bare. She unbuttoned his shirt and cuffs, revealing his pale Northwest chest and stomach, a trail of dark hair splitting his skinny torso nearly in two. The stitching from his transplant a red gash across his side, longer than she’d expected. Next, she unbuckled his pants and tweezed the top button open, closed her eyes as she unzipped him.
It occurred to her that she hadn’t undressed a man since her last boyfriend two years ago—Reggie had been drunk which is close to Demeter’s current state and had smelled better than the bile and brimstone erupting from the bartender’s gaping mouth…but not by much.
Luce glanced at Wade, unable to quash the thought that she’d much rather be disrobing him, wondering what he looked like, how he felt and hoping beyond hope that she’d get the chance to find out.
“Help me roll him.” Luce pulled up on Demeter’s shoulder and slipped off one half of his shirt, wadding it underneath to start on the other side, while Wade simply grumbled, tore off the guy’s other shoe, gripped the hems of his pants, and tugged them off in one rough motion. What was left was all nude and blisteringly white, dangly bits still jostling. Luce’s eye twitched with discomfort looking down at the guy.
“Get his feet,” Wade instructed, hefting Demeter’s torso from his hairy armpits. At some point, Wade had applied latex gloves but hadn’t offered her any, she noticed. And now she was touching stranger feet. Not usually weak-stomached, the very act of lifting a naked man, the slack feel of him and the possibility for transmittable diseases, left Luce feeling like she’d need to hunch over the toilet a bit before they left…and the cutting hadn’t even started yet.
Slipping him into the ice bath, Wilson Demeter startled awake, clutching at the sides of the bathtub—the porcelain cracked like the shell of a hard-boiled egg, peeled away from the cast iron. He glared at Luce and when he did, she felt an immediate and intense headache.
His eyes were wild, bloodshot things, his face contorted and pulsed as though his cheekbones had separated from his skull and were doing a little dance under the skin.
“What’s this?” the demon inside him cried. “Do we know you?”
Luce shrugged through the pain. She wouldn’t give it the satisfaction. “I think that’s rather unlikely, though I did nearly hit you with a car earlier, maybe you’re remembering that. It could have been life changing for both of us.”
“Don’t e
ngage with it,” Wade warned.
A direction that probably worked on people not so prone to gabbing incessantly. Luce couldn’t help but continue.
“Not life changing for us, for this measled whelp, possibly.”
Wade bound Demeter’s hands and feet and reached for the pallet of scalpels.
“Who are you?” Luce asked.
“Do not get familiar with it, and don’t give it your name.”
“No,” it cried, several voices at once, some deep, some high as screams. “Don’t bother. We’ll pry it out of Wade’s head eventually. Pick it out with a razor blade and gobble it up, and then we’ll have your number, too. We’ll have your number just like Wade’s. We’ll have your numbers.”
Luce shuddered, the demon had stopped struggling and seemed to be enjoying itself, swishing Demeter’s hips back and forth in the ice bath.
“Don’t cut us, Wade,” it mocked. “We want to dance for the pretty lady. You want to see us dance, don’t you, miss?” the demon coaxed, attempting to get her to finish the statement, to say her name.
Luce opened her mouth to finish but then slapped her palm across her mouth. She shook her head violently and looked away.
“Time for some exorcision?” she asked, her voice rushed and edgy.
Wade grinned, holding up the piece of sparkling surgical steel. “You’re damn right. After you call the paramedics.”
Luce did as instructed and slipped her cell back in her pocket, the thrill of the moment leaving her breathless.
Wade winked at her. “Now grab that crucifix and forehead that son of a bitch.”
Luce did as instructed, pressing the cross against the man’s sweaty brow. The barks continued, louder and more growly, but the bucking stopped. The power of Christ, she guessed—hadn’t that been the crux of the ritual in that movie?
Demeter caught the flash of the blade coming down and a sound rose from his mouth, somewhere between a bark and a sheep’s bleat. The retched noise was followed by a plume of black smoke and a trickle of bile that bubbled at the man’s lips and ran down his throat in rivulets, black veins of pulsing evil branching down his chest toward the transplant scar on his abdomen.