Along Came a Demon

by Linda Welch

  Granby was different. I felt him as we neared the liquor store. I heard him, a nonsense rhyme in a soft, whispering sing-song voice. He was singing as he died. I stopped, inexplicably chilled, and clasped the collar of my jacket closer to my neck.

  “Are you getting something?” Mike asked as he peered at me.

  “Where is he?” I rasped as I reminded myself, for the umpteenth time, Mike did not know what I heard and felt right then.

  Mike indicated the mouth of an alley just head of us. It ran between two unoccupied buildings which were small, square and identical, of faded and weathered blue clapboard, each with one big window in front. We walked on.

  “How old was he?”

  “Five and a half,” Mike said.

  “His name?”

  “Charles Geary. Parents called him Charlie.”

  I straightened up, sucking in my gut, and started along the alley. Narrow, unpaved, it smelled strongly of cat urine. Doors to the buildings either side faced each other across the alley and a few empty, battered garbage cans lay on their sides. Twenty feet down, on the right, a metal staircase went up the side of a building to the first floor. Charlie waited up there, somewhere behind the peeling door

  I trudged up the steps like I climbed to my doom. I wished the staircase were a hundred miles long. I wished I didn’t have to talk to the child and let him know yes, someone saw him and no, I couldn’t help him. Mike and Royal followed me up.

  A Realtor’s lockbox padlocked the door. Mike punched in the code to open the box and got out the key. He opened the door and stood aside to let me enter.

  I walked inside the living room of a small, bare, cold apartment.

  I followed Charlie’s voice to his bedroom. He sat cross-legged on the bare board floor, so small, and wearing his blue PJs with green-faced Incredible Hulks all over them. The PJs were a little grubby and damp in the crotch. Shoulder-length hair as pale as mine wisped over his pale-blue eyes and framed his downy cheeks. He looked up as I walked toward him, but his body language didn’t indicate interest. He didn’t think I could see him.

  He didn’t know to be afraid of them. He sat on the floor playing with his toys, humming his song. Someone approached him and he looked up, a half-smile on his face, still humming. A hand flicked out, a silver blade flashed.

  The man was there and gone in a second. A demon moving at more than human speed. I did not get a fix on his face, but Charlie saw him with the uncanny perception of those about to die.

  I squatted down in front of Charlie. I kept my voice low so Royal and Mike would hear only a murmur. With luck they would think I muttered psychic-style gibberish. “Hello, Charlie.”

  He looked at me, and as most children do, came right to the point. “Nobody else can see me.”

  I hunched my shoulders. “Do you know why, Charlie?”

  He shook his head. “No. When will Mom and Dad be home?”

  My heart cracked. So maybe I didn’t feel an actual, physical crack, but I knew it was cracking and there would be a gaping hole by the time I finished. “Not yet. But you’ll be with them again one day.”

  “When? Will it be soon?”

  “I don’t know, Charlie. But if we find the man who hurt you, you can go to a place where you won’t be alone while you wait for them.” I hoped.

  Charlie frowned, but accepted that without question. “Oh,” he said, “it was him.”

  “What do you mean, Charlie? I’m the only one here.”

  He pointed toward the door. “No, him, over there.”

  I looked back over my shoulder, hoping to see a third person, but only Mike and Royal stood at the door. Royal gave me what I took to be an encouraging smile. Mike looked at his feet.

  “What does he look like?”

  Charlie still pointed. “The big man with the long funny-looking hair,” he insisted.

  I felt as if the air had been sucked out of me. I squatted for a good fifteen seconds while Charlie looked up at me and my mind whirled. Royal Mortensen killed those boys. He killed little Charlie Geary.

  I shuddered in a breath and gave myself a mental shake. I had to handle this right.

  “Charlie, I’m going to ask those men to come here so you can see them better. Then if you still think it’s him, you give me a nod.”

  Charlie’s solemn little face went back to Royal. “I know it was him.”

  The dead never forget the face of their killer.

  “Please, Charlie… .”

  “Oh, okay.”

  So I beckoned to Mike and Royal, and they came in the room to stand just behind me. I watched Charlie’s face as his gaze lifted to Royal, and he nodded.

  I will never forget the look on Mike’s face when I told him. We went outside and yelled at each other for a while, and I was surprised to find Royal still waiting when we got back to him. He must have heard us. He could have lit out, but he waited.

  Mike didn’t read Royal his rights or cuff him, but he asked for his badge and gun while they “sorted it out.” Both looked numb. No - Royal didn’t look numb, he looked very deep in thought, and Mike looked defeated.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I walked into my house with my head down. As I said, I learned to control any outward reflection of my emotions long ago and I think Mike saw only anger and exasperation, but I’d wanted to cry since leaving him and Royal at the PD.

  The worst of it? I didn’t want it to be Royal. I didn’t want him to be the murderer, the one who personally did the job. I know, when I met him I made that assumption, but something changed. I was attracted to him, dammit! He was gorgeous and enigmatic and … and he had a kind of presence which turned me inside out.

  Some part of me didn’t wanted Royal to be a bad guy.

  “What’s wrong, Sweetie?” Mel asked.

  “Nothing!” I stomped past her and up the stairs to my bedroom, shut the door and threw myself on the bed.

  This must be the worst day of my life. Finding little Charlie, learning Royal was the killer, having to leave poor Charlie alone again, sitting in an empty, dirty, lonely apartment in his Incredible Hulk PJs.

  If God would grant me one boon, I would ask if I could gather up all the little lost shades and put them together in one place, so they would not be lonely while they waited to pass over.

  I buried my face in the pillow.

  I sat in the kitchen with Lawrence’s file on the table and tried to put Royal out of my mind. I couldn’t do it. Was the PD investigating one of their own? What did the division think of me pointing the finger at him?

  Most of them would pooh-pooh my accusation. A lot of them would be mad at me. But Mike believed me, just as on the other cases in which I participated, and that must count for something.

  I frowned at the manila folder. But the case wasn’t like the others I helped out on, except in one way: Mike initially had only my word to go on. Royal was one of theirs. Would Mike put the same pressure on his detective as he did the other suspects I fingered?

  Oh hell. Telling Mike was a huge mistake. He would not do a thing without proof, not in this instance, and what solid proof did he have Royal committed those murders? I should have kept my mouth shut and looked for evidence.

  By telling Mike, I may have done nothing more than dig a big hole for myself.

  I was driving myself crazy, one minute mourning the loss of a man who had never been mine, the next scared at the thought he’d be free to come after me. I shivered. Think of something else, Tiff. I opened the folder and spread the papers on the table.

  “You look better this morning!” Mel said brightly.

  I scowled at her.

  “You and your big mouth,” Jack told her.

  They got in an argument and I tuned them out. I went over it again, everything I had on Lindy and Lawrence, my notes and copies of the police file. Nothing new jumped out at me.

  I looked at Lawrence’s drawing. Something about it nagged at me. Taking the drawing with me, I crossed the kitchen and rooted in wh
at I call the trash drawer till I found my big magnifying glass.

  The tall figure with yellow hair. It could be a tall man, with a smile on his face, a nice smile, not an evil scowl. Lawrence liked him. If the man frightened him, the boy would not put a smile on the guy’s face. And right then a memory flitted through my mind, a memory of something I saw back in Lindy’s apartment.

  I dropped the magnifying glass on the counter.

  I had to get back in there.

  Because of Lawrence’s disappearance and the removal of all evidence of him, the apartment was now designated a crime scene, but the manager remembered me and gave me the key. I went up the inner stairwell and let myself in Lindy’s hall. I flicked on the light.

  The apartment already had the neglected air a place gets when it has been empty for a while, and a stale, flat smell almost overrode the potpourri. I tore into the living room and heaved a silent sigh of relief when I saw the furniture still in there. I went directly to Lindy’s roll-top desk and pulled the envelope I wanted from the second drawer down. I sorted through the papers inside, held one up before my face.

  Oh. My. God.

  I folded the piece of paper, tucked it in my pocket and headed for the front door. Someone stole away a little boy and I was pretty sure, now, I could identify that someone. The same someone touched Lindy, and I asked myself why. Did he know what I did for a living, did he want her to wander away from the scene of her death and come to me?

  I dismissed the idea. He had no reason to send Lindy’s shade to the local psychic, not when Lindy died of natural causes, and he had Lawrence. He touched Lindy for another reason. But why didn’t matter one iota. I had to get the child back.

  I needed backup. He could pull some Otherworldly trick on me if prepared to risk exposing his true nature, and if he turned nasty I would not stand a chance alone.

  The light in the stairwell must have blown while I was in the apartment, but the outside light limned the arch at the bottom of the stairwell. Watching where I put my feet, I charged down the steps, at the same time flipping open my cell phone and punching in Mike’s number. It rang five times, and I wondered if he sat at his desk looking at the caller ID on his phone, reluctant to take a call from me. But then he picked up.

  “Mike, I think I know where Lawrence is!”

  A second later something struck the back of my head and I fell.

  I came awake with my chin on my breastbone. I couldn’t see properly, just a blur. I frantically blinked my eyes, afraid the blow to the back of my head affected my vision, but it didn’t help. I tried to rub them and couldn’t move my hands.

  My hands were tied to the arms of a chair.

  Panic threatened to overwhelm me and I started to hyperventilate.

  Something cold and wet hit me in the face. Another dose slapped me in the neck and chest and I realized I was naked. I gasped and spluttered and I got mad. “You son of a bitch,” I began as my sight cleared.

  Caesar sat across from me, a table between us.

  For one stunned moment I just stared at him. Then, as anger burned through me, I bared my teeth and snarled something not to be repeated in polite company. He laughed at me.

  I sat in an unpadded wingback chair, naked as the day I was born, spine aching from an upright position against an unyielding surface. Thick, coarse rope imprisoned my wrists tight to the chair arms. My head hurt and my scalp felt tight.

  An empty glass jug sat on the table and I thought - hoped - the wet stuff on me was water from out of it.

  I blinked a few times and looked around. We sat in gloom close to the wall of a vast, circular room which must have been one hundred feet in diameter. The wall looked like plaster, smooth, pale-gray and featureless, and curved up like the sides of a bowl to a vaulted ceiling perhaps fifty foot high in the center. A dozen or so shining yellow globes hung from long cables in a cluster, dropping down thirty feet; they provided adequate illumination to the middle of the room, but left the edges in shadow. The inside of an arched opening to the left of where I sat glowed blue, showing steps leading upward. My bare feet rested on a floor of dark, dirty, scarred hardwood.

  I sat at the long side of a rectangular table made of pale wooden boards polished to a dull sheen, four foot by twelve at a guess, Caesar facing me on the opposite side. My chair was one of a matching dozen positioned around it, unoccupied but for me and the gold-haired demon. The grouping of table and chairs made a small island in what appeared to be an otherwise empty space, devoid of other furniture or any kind of ornamentation. It had the same ancient, empty feel of a cavern deep beneath the earth, or a huge catacomb minus bodies and bones. I inhaled dry, musty air through my nostrils.

  The sheer size and barrenness of the surroundings intimidated me, but not as much as my helplessness in the hands of my enemies.

  When I say empty, I don’t mean empty of people. Caesar had a few friends with him, about thirty demons who stood in a semicircle behind him. Demons of all heights and widths and hair coloring, demons with flashing eyes and pointed teeth, and I saw nothing friendly in their smiles. Their clothing was archaic: long, wide-sleeved shirts, embroidered tunics, tight hose, all a riot of metallic colors. Their narrow feet were bare.

  “Where is Lawrence Marchant?” Caesar drawled.

  I opened my mouth to rant at him, then pressed my lips together. I refused to give him anything.

  He leaned over the table. “You were speaking on your telephone. You said you thought you knew Lawrence’s location. You would do well to tell me.”

  I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I yelled, “You bastard! You murdering bastard! What makes you think you’ll get away with coming to my world and killing children?”

  My voice created an echo in the cavernous place: children, children, it called back to me. The demons nearest us smiled, the white enamel of their teeth standing out in faces of pale metallic colors.

  Caesar waved his hand back at his pals. “Oh, I had a little help.”

  I silently vowed to hold my tongue and Caesar said nothing more. Minutes ticked by. The demons were uncannily motionless now. I wished they would shuffle, or whisper, or move their heads, or anything rather than watch me with hungry, chaotic eyes. Was I still on Earth, or in Royal’s world, his reality? How long had I been here? Panic fluttered in my chest.

  I heard movement behind me and a hand fell on my shoulder. I flinched as I looked up. “Hello, Tiff,” Royal said.

  Relief so intense, so wonderful, settled over me, making me lightheaded. Thank you, God. I will never take your name in vain again! Royal was here. He had tracked me down. “Royal,” I croaked.

  “Hush now,” he crooned. “It’ll be okay.”

  He went behind me. Both hands on my shoulders now, fingers digging in my flesh, hurting. I felt his mouth on my hair, nuzzling, and he inhaled deeply. I couldn’t see him where he stood behind the high back of the chair, but … it felt wrong.

  It’s Royal, I told myself. I looked at the demons. He won’t let them hurt me. He has a plan.

  He came from behind the chair, fingers trailing down my arm to the wrist, diagonally across my belly to my left thigh. His hand dipped to brush my pale pubic hair, making me gasp and clench my muscles. “Patience, my Tiffany. It will soon be over,” he said in that same eerie croon. “All over.”

  My gut cramped. I looked ahead with blurring eyes, chilled by numbing disappointment as I realized how completely I let him dupe me. The man I thought I knew would howl with rage and tear my bonds to pieces with his bare hands. He would not stand next to me, his mouth on my hair, while ropes held me and a horde of demons watched. He would not touch me like that in front of an audience.

  Royal had not come to save me. He was one of them.

  He patted my shoulder and left me, and ambled around the table to Caesar. His arm shot out, his hand fastened on a thick hank of sun-gold hair and he hauled Caesar to his feet and to one side. “Get out of my chair.”

  Caesar staggered but kept his feet.
His expression was murderous, yet he stepped back and made a bow from the waist down. “Forgive me, Lord.”

  Royal lounged in the chair, twirling a lock of hair in the fingers of his right hand. He wore a silken, billowing white shirt open to his navel, the long sleeves fastened at his wrists with sparkling studs. Gold and jewels sparkled in his ears and on his fingers and glinted in the copper-gold of his hair. Yesterday, I would have admired the smooth, hairless chest framed by rippling silk, the narrow hips and solid thighs beneath skintight gray hose. Now I saw only the curl to his lip, the disdain in his glowing brown eyes.

  He smiled at me, revealing his pointed teeth.

  So that was a lie, too.

  As I watched his beautiful face, my fear melted away. There is no place for fear in a heart which seethes with rage. Rage at him for fooling me, at allowing myself to be duped. For being sucked in by his seductive ways. For being his victim. This was the man … I let him touch me and make me want more. I felt dirty.

  I turned my face from him. I couldn’t look at him anymore.

  “Tiff, look at me,” Royal said.

  My voice was heavy with revulsion. “Tried it. Don’t like what I see.”

  A hand snaked from behind the chair. An unseen demon’s blunt-nailed fingers dug in the skin of my mouth and chin, and forced my head around. I closed my eyes.

  “Don’t make him open your eyes for you,” Royal said.

  I opened them, blinking, to see his pointed smile again. The hand of the unseen demon let me go. “How are you with torture?” Royal asked in a pleasant, even voice.

  I felt my face blanch as his words sank in. The water on my body had nearly dried, but perspiration replaced it now. How was I with torture? I had no idea. I imagined I would scream my head off. But did he mean torture or torment, because to my mind the demon way of persuasion, the sexual desire they could arouse with just a touch would be as bad as physical pain when done by his hands. To be used so by Royal would be the ultimate humiliation. I would rather he stuck me with a knife.