My ears were ringing and the world spun slowly, blurring every time I turned my head. The chaos around me was displayed in moving vignettes: the remaining scuffles were between security guards and the NYPD; people had thrown down their weapons and were scattering; Barnem had gotten through the carnage and was leaping up on stage; the demon had finally freed himself of his last meal and was following suit; Donaldson pushed his way to the stage to where I was. But the most telling was seeing the smoke pouring out of the gun Petty had snatched from the security guard. Her black eyes were large, in shock, and some of the makeup on her cheek was rubbed off where she had been punched.
Barnem got me up and checked on me, his words still muffled behind my screeching ears. I wanted to make sure this whole thing was over, so I made sure to point out where Mason was so that the Shade couldn’t get away. My roommate cracked his knuckles and started cackling as he approached Mason’s dead body.
“Hey, Barnem.”
“Yeah, Grey.”
The demon began removing the debris to get to its meal.
“On a score of one to ten, ten being ‘Awesome’ and one being ‘Fuck My Life’, how would you rate our plan? He’s going to eat and get stronger now. This is all on us if he gets out of control.”
Barnem didn’t reply.
Rubbing its shadowy palms together, the demon opened its mouth over Mason. But then it was punched, struck so squarely and forceful that its head caved in like someone had used a sledgehammer on a black football. The punch itself came with a dull shockwave that sent the demon’s body hurtling through the air. It smashed into the overhead projector, bounced through the bottom of the second floor balcony and into the back wall.
Barnem grumbled and stood up. “Can I get back to you on that?”
“Sure thing,” I said. “Take your time.”
The only thing up out of the rubble was Mason’s arm, the one he had struck the demon with. But on that hand was Cracker Barrell.
The puppet stared at us with vile sewn hatred.
Barnem spat and tried to come off calm. “Give it up, Mason. There’s no way you can win here.”
The puppet looked around. “Tonight was brought to you by the letter ‘D’.”
Barnem looked back at me. I shrugged.
“‘D’ is for ‘disappointment’. For the ‘destruction’ of plans.” Mason’s back arched from the ground as he was pulled up to his feet without bracing himself with his hands. Now in full view, it was pretty obvious that he was very dead. Petty had struck him in the shoulder and the side of the head where the eyepatch sat. The bullet hole was large and glistening with black blood. From out of his eyes, his ears, his nose, it poured in thick spurts. Meanwhile, Cracker Barrell the puppet was still moving.
“But, Amanda Grey,” it said, as black feathers stuck out of the stitching, as it started to bulge and swell in size, “right now is all about ‘disfigurement’. ‘Disembowelment’. ‘Decapitation’.”
“Demon,” Barnem growled, pointing too dramatically for my tastes, “prepare to be slain.” The Seraph set his hands together and a blue burst of energy leapt out like he was holding lightning. Before the smoke lifted, Barnem charged, plunging the summoned weapon into Mason’s breastplate.
When the smoke dissipated, the weapon was roughly the size of a small dagger. A very dull dagger.
Cracker Barrell screamed bloody murder and Barnem let out a yell of triumph.
And then they both looked down.
The dagger had barely made a hole in the costume.
“Do over,” Barnem declared, but was instantly swatted away by Cracker Barrell. The impact came with a loud sickening CRACK that sounded like the Seraph had been broken in half. His lifeless body flew across the room and landed with sick thud against a pile of folding chairs.
“Stupid. S-s-stupid. S-s-s-o stupid.” Mason’s body spasmed as it vomited up bucketfuls of the black blood. Then the puppet on his hand started to expand, growing ten feet, twenty feet, two stories high. Even though some its sewing popped, and the black feathers below the ripped material becoming exposed, the goliath still looked like a massive hand puppet, but now with a wingspan longer than my entire body.
I felt someone beside me. Petty raised her gun and fired until the entire clip was empty, but the giant parrot just sucked in Mason’s body like a wet noodle.
“I know this might be a bad time,” my sister said as the enormous puppet took a step toward us, sending tremors through the ground and howled, “Greyyy!”
“It’s just that being dead gives you a new set of perspectives. I’m not making any sense here,” she said as we dove to the side of the giant beak. The impact caused the wooden floor to explode. “And I know I’ve been kind of a jackass to you. To Mom and Dad.”
Enraged, the parrot parted its mouth and dark flames shot out. It caught me so off guard that a stream climbed up my back and arm. As I screamed, Petty tackled me, smothering the flames. Only some of my neck and the back of my hair was singed.
“Our relationship is strained because of it. I know that. You know that. Everyone knows that.”
“Petunia,” I said in a way that was so my mom. This made Petty stop and take notice. “Can we, um, table the ‘sister reconciliation’? I’ll try to set up a brunch or a painting class or whatever. Raincheck.”
“Right.” She laughed as if it just dawned on her.
As I got to my feet, I wondered if death had made my sister both more aware of her surroundings and somehow even more self-centered
Donaldson leapt on stage with us. He had a pretty terrible cut above his eye, but he was alive. Which unfortunately meant he had questions.
“Grey—”
“Save it! Synopsis: the pirate mayoral candidate was being manipulated by this gigantic possessed fire breathing puppet.”
“Actually, I was going to ask if this was your sister.” He extended his hand and Petty shook it. “Jeffrey Donaldson. I live upstairs from Amanda.”
“Nice to meet you.” She leaned back and gave me the approving nod.
“I swear to god, Petty, that had better be the rigor mortis setting in.” I shoved them both back, making sure they kept their distance. “As a matter of fact, why don’t both of you just back off and give me some space to breathe? We got this.” I pointed around the hall—to the demon in the smoking crater on the second floor and the unconscious angel by the chairs.
“Maybe we should—” Donaldson started, but I waved my hands until he stopped.
“How about we—” Petty tried, but I made coughing noises until she shut up.
When they were both silent, I said, “So now I’m going to go do my job, whatever that means, and neither of you is going to need to butt in. I got this.”
I turned around and was immediately eaten by the twenty-foot parrot.
The whisper was coming out of empty space. I couldn’t feel my body, my fingers, my feet. I wondered if this is what death felt like. But then there was that voice.
“Psst. You know this is all your fault? All this death and destruction?”
“Who are you?”
My voice seemed to echo though there was only pure white. Endless nothing.
“Me? I’m no one.”
“Ah. No one. That’s something only a douchebag would say.”
The whisper chuckled.
“He-he. Such a mouth. Even in the end.” And then it said, “You should give up, you know? This would all just go away.”
“So is this the end or do I have to give up? I’m confused. If you’re here to taunt me, at least be consistent.”
“He-he.” The same odd laughter. “He-he. All right. Don’t listen to me. But look at where you’re at. Look at where you’ve landed.”
I was ready to say that I couldn’t―that I couldn’t make out an inch of my surroundings―but then the white space fell
apart and black ink began pouring in. In oceans. In leagues. And when it collided with the empty space where I had been standing, I felt my body. The world was rolling, throbbing, squirming, slipping. Everything had a black sheen. Everything was encased in the darkness. The world was dripping wet and encased in pulsating organs that spit the dark blood everywhere. I was in the belly of a killer parrot about to be digested.
As soon as I realized this, it was as if my confines took notice. The black blood latched itself to me, bound my arms and legs, dove into my throat and eyes and ears. I felt as if it were trying to pull me inside out.
And then the voice said, “Told you. Yeah. Totally sucks to be you right now.”
I tried to struggle. I tried prying my body free, but every extra movement hurt.
“Psst. Grey.”
The dark liquid started filling my lungs. I was drowning.
“You’re going to die now, Grey.”
I started blacking out.
“Or you could not. He-he. That’s your choice. You could die pathetically here, now. Or die pathetically … ehh some other time.”
I was closing me eyes. They were closing. But I was also balling up a fist. Balling it and setting it back. And feeling how my organs burned and how my blood curdled, and my bones vibrated underneath my skin. I set my fist back and threw that punch like I knew where it should go, like I knew whose face it should land on. It was a punch I threw a million times in over twenty years. And as it came to a stop, the world I was in ruptured and I spilled out into the violent light.
Hitting the ground, I threw everything up instantly. I couldn’t see a thing, but I heard sounds nearby, mostly wet dripping. Everything came out of me onto the floor as I took a much needed full breath of air. I was covered head to toe in the goop, and either I was crazy weak after almost being digested or the stuff actually weighed a ton.
The first person I spotted was Donaldson holding a dented folding chair. And then Phil trying to look badass with a gun. Beside him was Petty holding her arm, which seemed to have been ripped off. Even my roommate looked filthy and beaten along the edges of its body.
And each and every one of them seemed to be gawking at me.
“Hey,” I said, still not having much of a breath for anything else.
That’s when I noticed, none of them were looking at me.
I turned to see that I had punched my way out of the parrot’s belly. Blackened, hissing guts hung out of the giant hole I had used to exit the stupid thing. Cracker Barrel had not moved or made a sound. And then, almost a half a second later, the entire creature keeled off to the side and crashed into the ground.
I slid backward myself but Donaldson caught me and set me down.
The first thing I asked, for some reason was, “Barnem?”
“He’s alive. Beat badly. Just―”
“The voice …”
Donaldson looked at me strangely. He said something but I didn’t have my head on straight to make sense of it. Loud jets of steam cut him off as they burst out of the parrot’s body. And it began to shrink.
I pushed off of Donaldson and limped over to where the puppet sat, ragged and torn. Mason’s emaciated corpse was still attached to its lower end, and they both sat in a smoking pile of the dark tar.
“You … have no idea …” Cracker Barrell croaked as it spit out blood. “No idea … why he stays around, do you? But if you did know, if you were to find out … then how much—KRGH!”
My roommate had gone and stomped on the puppet’s head, which was fine by me because I was done with ominous messages. And as it picked it up, it was pretty damn obvious by how mangled it was that, though it wasn’t dead, it definitely wasn’t talking anymore.
As the demon slid the parrot/crow and its master into his mouth, and just as the large lump of this heap settled in its belly, I thought about the voice.
The voice I had heard.
Even though my roommate’s flesh began to bake and bubble. Even as sparks of hellfire blew from its mouth and fissures formed on its round head. Even as I stood watching the walking horror transform in front of me, I stayed removed from it all— just a passenger in my own body.
At first, I had thought that it was the demon inside Cracker Barrel talking to me. Wishing I would give up. Trying to make me settle. But it wasn’t. This voice, the one I had heard in that empty space, wasn’t trying to kill me. The feeling gnawed at me. The voice. The dread. The anger. The fear. I could hear it in the voice, even as it mocked me. Even as it laughed. In fact, I realized, that it all had actually sounded … familiar.
And just like that, the would-be mayoral press conference of Mason Scarborough came to an end just as black beams of ultimate evil signaled the revival of an ultimate evil.
CHAPTER 27
Shockingly, two days later, I found myself in my apartment watching television by myself.
How did I know I was alone?
Oh, you can bet your ass I checked!
In the bathroom, the back room, even under the couch. No-body. No one. It was so damn amazing that it made me ridiculously nervous for some reason. Then again, it could have been what was on the screen at the time.
Mason had won. I’m talking an epic landslide victory. The biggest margin in the history of the city. Even with the murder of his brother in front of hundreds of people. Even with being dead. Cracker Barrell had been the creature of power, of influence. But Mason wasn’t possessed by a Shade at all. This meant that the thousands of people who went out to vote for the guy were actually voting for him. No dark influence. No mysterious happenings. Just citizens exercising their democratic right to be incredibly idiotic.
Oddly enough, I understood their reasoning.
I had spent a week as a deity of my own cult, and I saw in the people mixed up with making that terrible decision one lone resemblance they were searching for something. I don’t think they were looking for an answer, I just think they were hoping there was an answer to begin with. Their lives weren’t where they wanted it. They were sad, depressed, angry. They needed hope, first and foremost, that there was something better out there.
Maybe Mason was the perfect guy for that job after all. He was used to programming kids, having them recite one form of gibberish after another and labeling it knowledge. Those kids became registered voters or disciples who were just looking for the same thing—a larger than life person who claimed to hear them when they were screaming into the darkness.
I turned the television off.
Zero. That was the number of newscasts and online journals that said anything about what really had happened in Booke & Ende. Mason had not allowed news cameras in the rally and nothing was ever brought up about the security cameras. The few folks that brought up the giant sewage spewing parrot were written off as part of “fanatic media”. The videos and recordings of the event were scrubbed, of course. No one had seen or remembered the giant talking parrot or the woman who punched her way out of its stomach. The consensus was that Mason had snapped, ran out and kidnapped his brother and executed him in front of hundreds of people. The public response?
“At least this is a guy who gets things done. That’s what we need in our officials.”
Awe inspiring.
I only wished Barnem could have been there to see it all go down. He was still in the hospital, in a coma with more bones broken than anything they’ve ever seen. I had beat that Shade, by myself. To hell with his “greater good”. I just needed him to wake up. To get out of his bed. To come back to the building, back to his apartment.
So that I could punch him in the face.
The peace and quiet was reaching out at me from all sides. I tried humming. I tried using a handball and bouncing it to myself from off of the taped hole in my wall. How long was this going to last? I had spent another wet and wild week head to head against demons. And now what? Where the hell was
everyone? When were they going to come and spoil it?
Feeling like the walls were closing in on me, I headed right for the door and to a place where I could clear my head.
Our super, Lou, had three major rules for the building.
No smoking in the hallways because you can give all the babies and dogs in the other apartments cancer.
No handball in the front of the building. Go next door if you want to do that shit.
And absolutely no one was allowed to go up to the roof. Not for safety concerns, but because he would go up there himself. That was where he escaped from nagging tenants and an equally nagging wife. I had been going as a kid and never ran into him.
Out in the chilly Queens air, the stars were out again in full force. It didn’t take me long to spot the moon, either. It was the first time in I don’t know how long that I had seen it.
We had done it. Sure, my sister had died and was now a host to a sealed fiend. Sure, Barnem ended up in the hospital. Sure, the world had now just gotten a whole lot weirder with humanity one step closer to total annihilation.
But we had done it.
We had staved off the apocalypse for another day.
But there was still something nagging at me, still lingering about the whole Mason fallout, and I couldn’t talk to anyone about it.
The voice I heard in the creature’s stomach. There was no explanation for it. Something was talking to me, to me directly. It spoke to me as if it knew me. I had no idea what it meant. Where it was going to take me. I had spent all of my life with my parents telling me that I wasn’t “Mental Mandy”, that I wasn’t crazy. But how could I explain any of the things I had seen? The things that I had done? The World Wide Weird was in my apartment, 24/7. Mine. But the voice … that was something closer.
A creak nearby made me spin around, and Donaldson popped his head out of the gated door.
“There you are. Petty told me you liked to come up here.”
“Did she now? Shocked she remembered.”
He stepped out into the night with me and looked up. “Can’t remember when was the last time I saw the moon that big.”
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