Daemon: Night of the Daemon

by Harry Shannon

  The Bhuta took its time answering. "The part of me that is Ali Basra seeks vengeance. You are the man who destroyed our plans."

  "How did I destroy them?"

  "We were nearing the end of a ceremony which would have made us immortal and without the need to change bodies. You brought your team into the house, killed my followers and ruined my plans."

  "So try again."

  "You do not understand. I will not have such an opportunity for another two hundred and thirty three years."

  "Well," Lehane said, dryly, "I guess that explains why you're pissed."

  Sandy interrupted, communicated desperation with her eyes. "Jeff, there's only one call left."

  "I know."

  "Do it." Sandy struggled to speak clearly as the arm tightened around her throat. "Blow the tunnel and leave."

  Lehane forced a bitter laugh. "You want to hear something really funny, Ali? I remember how you taunted me about leaving Heather to die that night in Vegas. I really loved my wife, but you were right."

  The Bhuta stiffened. Those eyes shifted from right to left as it tried to make sense of that statement. Sandy closed her eyes, perhaps in prayer.

  Finally: "I do not understand."

  "I did allow Heather to die of her wounds," Lehane said, "because I'm a solider at heart, someone who follows orders, goes by the book."

  "The book?"

  "Yeah, that means I try to do the right thing, even when it hurts. And that's what I'm going to do tonight."

  Lehane backed further up the tunnel. He put the flashlight on the floor and moved it until the Bhuta and Sandy were in a makeshift spotlight. He sighted on Sandy's forehead.

  "Do you want me to take you out first, Sandy?"

  Her eyes widened. She nodded briskly. "Yes, do it now, get it over with. I love you Jeff."

  He aimed, let his finger tighten on the trigger. "Goodbye."

  "Wait!" The Bhuta was furious. It loosened the hold on Sandy's neck. "You may have her if you stay. She is not the one I came for."

  Lehane considered. He lowered the Glock and relaxed his finger. "So you will take me in her place?"

  The macabre grin returned. "Yes."

  "I'm going to set the gun down on the floor, Ali. Then I'll step away from it. When I do that, I want you to let Sandy go."

  "Jeff, no." Sandy was shaking. "Don't do it."

  The Bhuta considered the offer carefully. Those dark, feral eyes darted up and down. "No tricks?"

  "No tricks," Lehane said. "Just as long as you realize you're not getting out of here tonight. You can have Sandy, or you can have me, but one of us is going to blow this mine and leave you trapped."

  The Bhuta smiled. "Put down the weapon."

  Lehane squatted in the dirt and did as he was told. He watched carefully. "Now let her go."

  "You come this way first."

  "Okay," Lehane said. He moved slowly, teasingly. "This is smart because I'm the one you want. I'm the one that ruined everything."

  "No tricks!"

  Lehane moved closer. He kept his knees slightly bent and stayed on the balls of his feet. When he was a few feet away, the Bhuta abruptly released Sandy, who moved as if shot from a cannon. She ended up behind Lehane, to his right.

  "Sandy, the grenades are to the right of the opening to the mine. Go."

  "Not without you."

  "You don't go, we both end up dead."

  Sandy heard steel in his voice. She reluctantly began to withdraw. She walked backwards up the slope, without turning her back.

  Ali Basra crooked a finger in a come hither gesture. "Now you will learn what hell truly is…"

  "Can I ask you something first? I told you that there is no way you're leaving here tonight, but you don't seem to give a damn. Why is that?"

  The Bhuta moved closer. A repugnant stench flooded the area. Lehane willed himself to remain still. The creature cocked its head and licked lips the color of spoiled veal. "Did you really think a Bhuta could only inhabit a human, Lehane?" It moved in a circle around him, tauntingly. "This cave is full of life forms. Any one of them could serve as my host."

  "So the rat finds a way out one day and bites a feral cat, the cat scratches a dog, the dog bites its master…and you're loose in the world again."

  "Precisely." The Bhuta stopped. One long, yellowed nail lovingly stroked his neck. It turned, looked up the slope at Sandy. "So go ahead, you little bitch, do your worst. I'll be free again eventually, and then I shall come for you."

  "You really are immortal." Lehane put his arms behind his back. His fingers found the pin to the white phosphorous grenade stashed on his belt. "Well, unless you die by fire."

  Sandy paused in the tunnel. "And that can be arranged."

  A flicker of concern crossed the blood-spattered face of the Bhuta. It stepped back, as if anticipating betrayal. Lehane brought the grenade into view. He removed the pin with his hand clenched, then replaced it again. For the very first time, the Bhuta seemed afraid.

  "This ought to get the job done," Lehane said. "It is white phosphorous. Of course, we will both die. Goodbye, Sandy."

  Above him, Sandy started walking backwards again. Without turning around to look, Lehane said, "I love you, too."

  Sandy vanished into the gloom.

  Lehane quoted aloud from the Tao Te Ching. His voice was tight with tension and rage. "The Master respects death, for the nets of Heaven are cast wide. Absolutely nothing escapes its grasp."

  He raised the grenade.

  "No!"

  The Bhuta rushed toward him, hissing like a cockroach, its rancid tongue protruding; murderously efficient drool dripping from the half-open mouth of the occupied corpse. Lehane dodged to one side and reached out with his left leg. He tripped the creature. It fell forward onto hands and knees. Lehane kicked it in the head with the side of his foot. He knew doing violence to the body was almost pointless, but the act gave him immense satisfaction.

  The beast spat into the dirt and got doggedly back to its feet. The soft, pasty side of the decomposing face was had collapsed into itself like wet cardboard. The effect was nauseating.

  Lehane taunted. "Death has come for you at last. How does it feel?"

  He stepped closer, holding the grenade. This time the creature withdrew into the gloom. When Lehane pulled the pin a second time and released the action with a loud PING it panicked. The terrified Bhuta raged as its eyes searched the cave for a rodent to inhabit. Lehane waited a long second until it was clawing at the rock wall and totally preoccupied by a rat it had caught. Then he tossed the grenade, spun around and sprinted for the tunnel.

  Seconds later, the Bhuta realized that the grenade had not exploded. Lehane had removed the charge.

  "Damn you!"

  The creature shambled up the dirt path and approached the fork, but by then Lehane had recovered the Calico rifle. As the corpse turned the corner, he fired half a dozen tracer rounds. The noise was deafening, the light blinding. He threw the rifle over his shoulder and ran again. Still alive, the monster quickly recovered and soon picked up speed.

  Up above, Sandy heard them coming. She had already arrived at the mouth of the mine and was searching frantically for the grenades Lehane had described, but couldn't find them. She was on the wrong side of the entrance. When Lehane rounded the last corner, the Bhuta was only yards behind. He grabbed the grenade launcher, whirled and fired. The world went white hot.

  For a long moment, both Sandy and Lehane were deaf from the explosion. The entrance to the mine was nearly collapsed, except for a small space in the rocks. Lehane stuck the barrel of the grenade launcher in that hole.

  "Cover your ears."

  Sandy turned her back and followed instructions. He fired again, and the rocks reassembled into an impenetrable wall. Seconds later a harsh wail of rage could be heard from somewhere down the mine shaft. Lehane's ears were making a chuffing sound, mingled with something like radio static. Lehane shook his head to clear them, but the sound continued.

/>   The choppers.

  He grabbed Sandy by the hand. He checked his watch. It was almost one thirty in the morning.

  They were nearly out of time.

  "Come on!"

  Sandy ran with him. "Jeff, he said he could escape as a rat or something…"

  "Move."

  They crossed the road and went straight down the slope toward the garden. Lehane dragged, prodded, poked and yelled at her all the way. At times they fell and rolled sideways before bouncing back to their feet again, but somehow he did not lose the little Calico rifle. Finally, covered with scratches and bleeding cuts, they broke through the garden and out into the mortuary parking lot.

  The first AH 64 Apache was already coming in, missiles armed and lowered. The second circled perhaps a quarter mile away, waiting its turn.

  They waved their arms and shouted, but the pilot did not see them. The efficient, murderous chopper started its rapid descent. In a matter of seconds, the entire area would be a lake of fire.

  Lehane grabbed the Calico from behind his back and raised it. He shot the remaining few tracer rounds straight up into the night sky. The effect was beautiful, impossible to miss.

  The deadly AH 64 Apache wavered and then veered away. The wickedly pointed missiles did not fire. The second chopper wobbled in acknowledgement. Sandy fell flat on the pavement and rolled over onto her back, panting with exhaustion. Lehane kept waving. The second bird moved in, hovered for a bit, and eventually dropped a rope ladder to pick them up.

  Five minutes later, the helicopters were on the way back to their secret base. What had once been Flat Rock was a blistering inferno, down below and far behind them. Charlie Spinks had used his contacts and Enrique's money wisely. The entire area would be soon cordoned off as a toxic chemical dump. It would also be repeatedly torched on and off for many years to come, just to make sure. It was over.

  Unless one little cockroach survived.

  Humanity follows the earth.

  Earth follows Heaven.

  Heaven follows the Tao. (tinku)

  The Tao follows only itself.

  —Tao Te Ching

  "The Intimacy of Terror"

  Or

  'Harry Shannon Knows Things'

  An Afterward

  By

  Gary A. Braunbeck

  Stay with me on this:

  Do you remember the old horror/sci-fi movies from the 50's? Movies like The Blob, Invasion of The Saucer Men, the Mole People, and countless others? If you do, then you'll recall that in a lot of them, at the movie's conclusion, the words "The End" would begin to swirl around like rings of cigarette smoke until they formed a question mark (usually accompanied by a final, ominous chord from the score). Rob Zombie brought that grand old tradition back recently at the end of his House Of A Thousand Corpses (if you stayed in the theatre long enough to see the end). Yes, it's cheesy; yes, it's laughable; and you bet it's the sad last gasp of a movie whose makers know they've blown it, and so have to try to leave you with at least one mild chill, even if that chill is the threat of a sequel.

  But I digress.

  It doesn't matter how old or jaded you think you are; every time you see one of these tacky old movies on late-night television (or video rental) and that ominous question mark appears at the end, you get momentarily caught up in the nostalgia and can't help but smile, because you know, don't you, that sometime, somewhere, that campy question mark actually made somebody shudder. Maybe it was even you, when you were younger and more innocent.

  The only thing that could have possibly made Harry Shannon's "Night" Trilogy any better was if he'd somehow figured out a way to make the words "The End" morph into a question mark, or followed those words with an ellipsis and then a question mark. (That, and maybe Joe Flaherty as Count Floyd intoning: "Ooooooo… SPOOOOOKYYYYYYY!") Not because the 3 books are cheesy, or campy, or laughable, but because all 3 novels have so perfectly captured the spirit of those old 50's horror Sci-Fi potboilers while simultaneously giving that spirit a much-needed shot in the arm of literary sensibility.

  In almost direct contrast to what he says in the introductions to all 3 novels (claiming that they are nothing more than entertainments, throwbacks to the great pulps he read as a younger man), Shannon's trilogy—despite the trappings, despite the body-counts, and despite the deliberately ham-fisted titles—has literary muscle rarely seen in the horror field these days; in fact, the last time I can remember reading novels that were both this action-packed and this smart was in the heyday of Robert McCammon (one of Shannon's influences).

  Night of the Beast, though drawing its surface influences from the work of Stephen King, actually has more in common with Davis Grubb; Night of the Werewolf, while influenced by McCammon, is actually closer in spirit and tone to the work of Ed Gorman; and this last novel, Night of the Daemon (or it might be called Night of the Undead by the time you're reading this, though I think Night of the Ghoul would be more appropriate), might seem at first glance like a Dean Koontz-influenced yarn, but if you look closer, you cannot help but draw comparisons to John D. MacDonald.

  You see, the thing is, Harry Shannon Knows Things. A quick glance at his biography reveals that here is a man who has been many, many things in his life; an actor, a singer, an Emmy-nominated songwriter, a recording artist in Europe, a music publisher, a film studio executive, a practicing counselor…. He is the embodiment of the old adage, "A writer must live many lives."

  I used to think I led an interesting life; Shannon makes me look like I've been standing still.

  And that know-how, that wealth of experience, has made Shannon a writer of incredible energy who at the same time never blinks his eye for detail; the results are some of the most muscular and richest prose the horror field has to offer. Think I'm overstating my point? Then go back in this novel and re-read the concert sequence, or the scene with the professor, or the passages where we're first introduced to Lehane, and study how Shannon does it: he makes it look easy; but, then, that's the sign of a truly good writer—how he can cram so much detail, characterization, and background information into a scene and still have things barrel along like an out-of-control freight train.

  And yet, despite the epic sweep of all 3 novels (Night of the Werewolf goes from scenes in the old west to World War II and then to modern day without stopping to catch its breath), the thing that haunts me the most about the trilogy is the way all of them boil down to the intimacy of terror; there might be ancient curses, monsters that have survived through centuries, threats of entire populaces being wiped out in apocalyptic conflagrations, but they always come down to the most simplistic—and therefore the most affecting—confrontations between good and evil: the one-on-one, usually with an innocent third party trapped in the middle. (Come to think of it, that's something the Trilogy does have in common with those gloriously awful horror Sci-Fi movies; they, too, always boiled down to the intimacy of terror.)

  Familiar? Sure. But you know what?

  In the right hands, it still works.

  And Harry Shannon makes it work.

  If Night of the Daemon was your first introduction to Harry Shannon's work, then I envy you; I envy you the discovery of a strong, vital, literate-minded writer; I envy you the rollercoaster rides of the first 2 books in the Trilogy (and, no, it doesn't matter in what order the books are read—this is a thematic trilogy, not sequential), and most of all, I envy you that moment when, during one of the novels, you experience that pang of chilling nostalgia, remembering those glorious old black-and-white movies that used to scare you half to death on television on Friday nights when you were young. Trust me, you will experience such a moment, because Harry Shannon Knows Things.

  He knows that the well-told story will never go out of style, regardless of its subject matter.

  He knows that these kinds of stories are first foremost meant to be rollicking good fun.

  He knows that one good shudder is worth a thousand gross-outs.

  And he knows all about
the intimacy of terror.

  So, g'head…pick up another Harry Shannon book…I triple-dog dare you. Hell, the guy writes great mysteries, too.

  The only question mark you'll find at the end is the one in your mind, prefaced by the words: How soon can I get more Shannon?

  —Gary A. Braunbeck

  Lost in Ohio

  Feb. 18, 2004

  The End.

  Table of Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  PREFACE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  "The Intimacy of Terror"

  Table of Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  PREFACE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN