The Knowing Box Set EXTENDED EDITION: Exclusive New Material

by Ninie Hammon

  Jack has never had a friend like Daniel Burke and he stops to wonder if he will have one—as pure and good as Daniel—ever again in his life.

  Then he turns his eyes back to Bishop and Becca, and he is certain that he will never in his life know another girl as beautiful as she is. Beautiful and almost…holy.

  “Satan wants chaos,” Bishop responds, his voice booming in the small room. “Pain. Heartache. Misery. It’s his bounden duty; his reason for existence is to thwart the purposes of God. He is pure evil, nothing good in him. He’s the prince of this world and he lives to torment mankind.”

  Theresa appears in the doorway then with a plate of cookies. Bishop continues to talk as she sets them on the coffee table and the children gobble them up.

  “Them demons that’s working they mischief right now in Bradford’s Ridge—six of them don’t show up in one place for no reason. They ain’t powerful enough to have got here by theirselves. They had to a’been sent.”

  Jack feels Daniel move next to him, glances over, and sees something like the same awe on his face that’s likely on Jack’s. It’s like that all the time. He’ll think something, look over, and can see Daniel’s thinking the same thing.

  “Sent?” Daniel echoes.

  Jack thinks his voice sounds like a minister’s voice, like he’s standing in a pulpit preaching.

  “Uh huh. Them bad boys’ demons, they’s only the hired help.”

  “Who sent them?” Jack asks.

  “Ain’t a who, it’s a what,” Bishop’s voice is quiet, but seems loud in the small room. “From what I’ve seen and heard—only explanation that makes any sense to me is that there’s an efreet hereabouts somewhere, here in our world.”

  Jack feels his skin go pebbly with gooseflesh at the sound of the word.

  “Solomon had truck once with an efreet, least that’s what it says in the Koran. You read about efreets in Middle Eastern, particularly Iranian, literature. I got lots of books talks about them.”

  “What’s an efreet?” Daniel asks.

  “It’s an enormous winged creatures made of fire.” Bishop gets to his feet and goes into his office in the next room. It’s where he keeps his books about demons. The children don’t go in there—not because Bishop won’t allow it—but because the room is Bishop’s and it seems like…like holy ground.

  He returns with a reproduction of an ancient painting. In the painting, a pillar of darkness obscured by smoke rises out of a lake of fire. The darkness is a black hole in the world—a shape with wings.

  “This here’s an efreet. The Bible says that our battle is ‘not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, the powers, the authorities of this dark world.’ An efreet is a ruler, an authority. A powerful, powerful evil.”

  “This efreet…where is it?” Jack asks.

  “Here in our world—somewhere close by,” Bishop replies. Theresa returns with the lemonade as Bishop continues. “Only way for an efreet to enter this world is if somebody summons it.” He pauses, then adds softly. “And I can’t figure how anybody could have done that, ’cause what you have to use for the ceremony—the implements don’t exist no more. I’ve read about ancient scrolls that tell how folks called forth demons from Hell, but them scrolls have been lost for centuries, and even if you could lay hands on one, they was in languages ain’t nobody spoke for a thousand years.”

  He pauses again and sighs. “Only thing’s still around is the blood.”

  “Blood?” Daniel asks.

  “All kind of spiritual things centuries ago was related to blood sacrifices. The Jews were required once a year to bring a lamb to be sacrificed on the altar in Jerusalem.”

  It’s Becca who speaks this time, her voice like little bells ringing. “Somebody killed a lamb to bring an efreet into the world?”

  Bishop looks down on her with such care she might as well have been his own little girl.

  “No, Sugar. Didn’t nobody sacrifice an animal. To bring a demon like this one”—he points to the monster in the picture—“out of the spiritual realm and into the world, you got to sacrifice…a person.”

  Becca was pale anyway, but when he said that, all the color drained out of her face and it was as white as a clean sheet. You could see a spiderweb of blue veins on her temples.

  “So if someone in Bradford’s Ridge summoned an efreet,” she says, her voice so soft it is barely audible, “they had to…murder somebody?”

  Bishop nodded, his big face in front of Becca moving slowly up and down.

  “And not just anybody. Got to be somebody who’s been singled out, somebody evil has put some kind of mark on.”

  “How does evil put a—?” Becca began.

  “I don’t have no idea, Sugar. No idea whatsoever.”

  “The blood of a murder victim,” Jack said quietly. “Someone ‘marked by evil.’ That’s what you need to summon an efreet.”

  Theresa’s head came up.

  “You remember Bishop telling you that?”

  “I did just now. A memory popped into my head. Sitting in a room with Daniel and Bishop and Becca, and Bishop was explaining to us about efreets.”

  “What does ‘marked by evil’ mean?” Daniel asked.

  “Bishop said that, did he?” Theresa asked. When Jack nodded, she shook her head. “I don’t remember him saying that part.”

  Daniel looked troubled. “I have no memory of what you’re describing. But…” His face took on a look of studied concentration. “I know things about efreets, and how else would I know except from Bishop telling me?”

  “What do you know?” Theresa asked.

  “I know what Jack said, about the murder victim. And I know it can possess people, but only people who come in contact with it, are inside the circle.”

  “What circle?” Jack asked.

  Jack could tell Daniel was hearing his own thoughts for the first time as he spoke them.

  “A pentagram. It outlines the boundaries of where a demon can go in this world—unless it possesses a person and escapes. Bishop said it wasn’t an easy thing for a demon to possess a person—that the human mind and will—and soul—fight back. It’s something that doesn’t happen quickly. It takes years of tempting a person away from what’s good and right, years of beating a person’s will into submission.”

  “So how did a bunch of kids—?” Jack began.

  “But with simpler, less mature minds and wills—like children—a demon can shove them aside and move right in,” Daniel said.

  “That’s what Bishop figured out,” Theresa said. “It was an efreet sent demons into them boys when you was all children.”

  “Did the efreet itself possess any of them?” Jack asked.

  “Bishop said an efreet was such a huge, powerful demon, if it was to possess a little child it…he said it’d be like putting rocket fuel in a toy truck—it’d burn up. No, somehow them children come along, and he sent smaller demons into them—”

  “Why—?” Jack began, but Theresa kept talking.

  “And having demons inside was how them boys could do the amazing things they done.”

  “That explains the desk,” Jack said. Daniel looked confused. “The shooter threw a desk all the way across the room with one hand.”

  “So the power of the demon—?” Daniel began.

  “Demons ain’t got no power of they own in this world. But demons is able to call up all the power you got your own self. Like the man possessed by demons in Scripture, the one lived in the tombs. Folks told Jesus they’d tried to chain him up, but he broke the chains.”

  “If they control your body, they must be able to release adrenaline—so you’re like that woman I read about who picked a car up off her little girl,” Daniel said.

  “Like a juiced-up crack head. Goody. But there are downsides to an adrenaline high.” Jack didn’t elaborate.

  “And they don’t care nothing about what happens to the body they’s in, they don’t feel no pain.”

  “It’s a mir
acle we’re still alive,” Daniel said, awe in his voice.

  “It ain’t no miracle. If they’d wanted to kill you, they would have. Apparently, they didn’t, or more likely they was ordered not to.”

  “Why?” Jack asked.

  “Must have been a good reason, but I don’t got no idea what it’d be. All’s I know is that efreet got stopped twenty-six years ago, but somehow it got loose again. Soon’s it did, them other demons was able to slide right back in where they was before. Must be that possession leaves you vulnerable somehow. Jesus talked about that, said if an unclean spirit went out of a person, it could go back and take seven friends. The boys them demons possessed is grown men now, but the demons had left they mark and wasn’t no force of will could keep them out.”

  “How was the efreet stopped?” Daniel asked.

  “I don’t know that, neither, not for sure. I know Bishop had plans about it, but…” She paused and took a deep breath, looked deep into the faces of both men before she continued. “What me and Bishop figured musta happened was…it was you three done it. You sent it back to hell somehow.”

  Jack and Daniel exchanged a look of astonishment. Thunder groaned and grumbled. Rain rattled like buckshot against the windowpane.

  “We did?” Jack said.

  “Had to be. One day them demon-possessed boys was tormenting you, and you three was as close-knit as steel wool. The next day, the demons was gone, them boys was all tore up, and the three of you acted like strangers. Something happened and you must have been involved.”

  “And the efreet wiped that whole summer out of our minds so—” Daniel said.

  “No, that ain’t it. Wasn’t the efreet.” She paused. “I don’t think it was. But maybe…” Theresa fell silent, then her composure broke. “If Bishop was here, wouldn’t be no ‘maybes!’” She looked upward. “How’m I gonna do this all by myself, Lord, ’thout Bishop?” She put her head in her hands, shook, but didn’t cry.

  Before Jack even had time to wonder what he ought to do, Daniel was on his feet, laying his hand tenderly on Theresa’s shoulder.

  “You’re not all by yourself, Theresa,” Daniel said. “I mean…we’re worse boneheads now than we were when we were kids, but we’re—Jack and I—we’re…here for you. You have us.”

  Daniel sounded awkward, not smooth and polished, but stumbling. Not a whole lot better than Jack would have sounded if he’d tried to be comforting, and Daniel was a professional at it. Then Jack realized that was the reason Theresa was so moved. She lowered her hands from her face and looked up into Daniel’s. Unshed tears made her eyes sparkle. She reached up and patted his hand on her shoulder, started to say something, then didn’t. She wasn’t smiling, but he thought she was beaming nonetheless.

  Daniel sat back down and it was quiet. Reflections of lightning fluttered across the floor like a blue flame burning on alcohol. Theresa tried to take up where she’d left off.

  “That efreet didn’t make you forget. Demon can’t do that, can’t get inside the head of a person he don’t possess and do things to his mind—and certainly not you boys and Becca. You’s Christians.” She paused and shook her head. “But them boys from Brewster Academy as was possessed—we heard they was a mess.”

  “How so?” Jack asked.

  “You got to remember, this was the same time as the Twin Oaks fire and the whole town was a mess. Two of them boys had relatives died in the nursing home, and they whole families fell apart. It was all hushed up, but we heard Cole Stuart’s daddy committed the boy to a mental hospital for awhile. Roger Willingham’s parents sent him off to California to live with his uncle who was a monk! You got to figure—you’re twelve years old and get possessed by a demon. When it’s gone, how you gonna be after? I don’t imagine them boys was ever quite right again.”

  “If the efreet didn’t wipe that summer out of our minds, why’d the three of us forget it?” Daniel asked.

  “If I’s to guess, I’d say maybe you erased your own minds—or God did. A thing terrible as you done, I don’t know what it’d do to the mind of a child. You forgetting was a blessing. You’s being protected from something that would have tore you up.”

  Jack was reeling. He and Daniel and Becca had gotten into a fight with a monster demon when they were twelve years old. And won?

  “Maybe that’s what Mikey was talking about,” Daniel put in. “He said we went in…somewhere…and when we came out it was like we didn’t even know each other. Maybe that’s when we…did whatever it was we did.”

  “Ok, Ok…wait a minute.” Jack was reeling. “You’re saying three twelve-year-olds defeated that?” He pointed over his shoulder at the picture but didn’t turn to look at it. “Are you serious?”

  “No,” Theresa said quietly. “Not three twelve-year-olds alone. Three twelve-year-olds and an angel.”

  “An angel?” Jack couldn’t wrap his mind around that in any way.

  “That bright light you seen with Becca. It was a angel. That’s how you done it.”

  “But if we defeated it, what’s going on now?” Daniel demanded, frustration and fear coming out as anger in his voice.

  Theresa shrugged, held her hands out, palms up. “It musta got loose somehow,” she said.

  “So we beat it…captured it, imprisoned it…took its battery out—whatever—and now it’s broken out of whatever we locked it up in,” Jack said, trying to work it out in his head as he spoke.

  “And it’s sent them other demons after you three ’cause you was the ones beat it the first time. It wants to get rid of you ’fore you have a chance to stop it, like you done before.”

  That was it. Overload. Jack had jammed into his mind way more than he was able to process. He stood abruptly.

  “I’m sorry Theresa, but I’ve only got a lone synapse still firing and if I hear one more amazing thing, it’ll die and I’ll be a vegetable.”

  “All this is a lot to get your mind around,” she said, and Jack could hear the sympathy in her voice. “You need to let it all go now for awhile, both of you. Get on out of here and go home.”

  Theresa walked them to the door and Jack turned to her before they left.

  “You do understand about the two…the ones still out there, how dangerous they are?” he asked her.

  She nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “Keep your doors and windows locked.”

  She merely looked at him. They both knew locked doors and windows wouldn’t even slow down what was after them.

  Jack turned up his collar to the drizzle and walked away. Darkness folded around him like great black wings.

  * * * * * * *

  Daniel was waiting for Emily when she came downstairs in her robe after she put Andi to bed. He’d been sitting in the living room in the dark, and when she turned on the light and saw him, she jumped and let out a little squeak of fright.

  “Dan, you scared me to death! I didn’t even know you’d gotten home. Why are you sitting here with the lights off?”

  “Emily, I need to talk to you.”

  He hated the way she tensed, cringed away from his words.

  “We’re not doing this, Dan,” she said. “We are not going to go over and over—”

  “That’s not what I want to talk about.”

  “Ok, then what do you want to talk about?”

  She didn’t believe him. She thought he was about to launch into accusations and recriminations and…

  “Demons,” he said and watched an array of emotions pass over Emily’s face, only one of them identifiable—fear.

  She sank onto the arm of the chair just like she’d done the night he told her he knew about her and WhatHisName. He shoved the image out of his mind and tried to concentrate. Where could he possibly start to make her understand what was going on? The two of them had spent every day since the end of June in a choreographed minuet where they spun in circles, passed each other without speaking or touching, and each pretended nothing at all strange was going on with their daughter�
��who’d died! But didn’t.

  “Dan, I don’t want to—”

  “Neither do I. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. I want to pretend everything’s normal and our ten-year-old daughter can’t see monsters from hell that are invisible to the rest of the world.”

  “We don’t know that. She could have been imagining—”

  “You don’t believe that any more than I do. Besides, this isn’t just about Andi anymore. It’s about all of us.”

  He let out a long sigh.

  “This is way more than your mind can possibly process, Emily. But what’s happening is dangerous and you have to know.”

  She stared at him dumbstruck, didn’t say a word.

  He started with the school shooter, the picture and Jack. By the time he had waded through the exploits of the other team members, Emily had unconsciously begun to shake her head back and forth. Eventually, she blurted out, “Dan, stop it. You don’t honestly believe—”

  “I’m not telling you what I do or don’t believe. I’m telling you facts. Four men who were on a Little League team with Jack and me in 1985 went inexplicably psycho in the past two weeks—fact. They either tried—or succeeded—in killing people—fact. And they were all looking for the same thing.

  “Becca,” she whispered. “A little girl who went to grade school with you who—”

  “Who knew. Just like Andi does.”

  Suddenly, Emily rose to her feet, her hands balled into fists to keep them from shaking. He could tell she’d reached her limit—to pour any more in would just send her emotions sloshing up over the sides.

  “I’m done. This is crazy. How can you possibly—?”

  He went to her and put his hands on her shoulders, a knee-jerk reaction to her distress. He didn’t realize until he was touching her that it was the first time since—