Demon Hunting In Dixie

by Lexi George

  Correction: something. A jagged black mark marred the front of Jebediah’s Cavalry uniform, a mark that matched the scar on Addy’s right breast.

  The demon had left a calling card, a great big headless four-ton calling card.

  Addy was no expert on demons, but she knew a challenge when she saw one.

  This was a declaration of war, demon-style.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The chief stomped out to his patrol car. Addy followed him outside, her ever-constant Dalvahni shadow at her heels.

  “I gotta call this in. The mayor needs to be notified. And the town council,” he said.

  The chief’s face was bright red. Addy had looked like that once after a day at the beach. But, the chief wasn’t sunburned. Nope, the chief was about to blow a gasket.

  “How the hell did somebody move this thing all the way from downtown?” he fumed. “It ’ud take a forklift to move the son-of-a-bitch. Don’t matter. If I find out who did this, I’m gonna bury ’em under the jail. Stealing a corpse is one thing, but this here is desecration of a war hero. It’s like shooting the pope a bird. These suckers have crossed the line.”

  “Who shot the pope a bird?” Muddy stepped out onto the porch. She gave a startled yelp when she saw Old Jeb. “Why is there a decapitated Civil War hero sitting in my yard?”

  “Spanish-American war hero, Muddy,” Addy said. “Jeb was a Rough Rider, remember? Saved Behr County from the pernicious boll weevil by convincing local farmers to stop planting cotton and go nuts. That’s why he has the big peanut in his hands.”

  “Is that a peanut? I always thought it was a pickle.”

  “What in the world gave you that idea?”

  “Lots of folks around here grow cucumbers, Addy. Pickles are big in the food industry. Think about it. There are bread-and-butter pickles and sweet pickles, and kosher dills and hamburger chips, not to mention gherkins and pickle relish.” She peered at the statue. “It’s not a very good peanut, if you ask me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have thought it was a pickle.”

  “Don’t look so much like a pickle to me as a cat turd,” Mr. Collier said, eyeing the statue. “I had this cat once that made the oddest-shaped poop. Kinda like that pickle there.”

  “I remember that cat.” Muddy cocked her head. “ ’Course, looking at it from this angle, it could be a dildo.”

  Oh, good Lord. Like the City Fathers would commission a statue of Hannah’s favorite son holding up a two-foot dildo.

  “Got me a notion about that statue.” Mr. Collier lowered his voice. “But I’d better wait until the chief leaves. Wouldn’t want him to think I’m crazy.”

  Addy rolled her eyes. Everybody in Hannah thought Amasa Collier was crazier than a sack of weasels.

  As it turned out, the chief didn’t leave until after noon. Not until the mayor, the town council, the whole police department, the fire and sheriff departments, and half the town had traipsed through Muddy’s yard gawking at Headless Jeb and scratching their collective heads over such a peculiar thing as a migrating statue. Robyn James showed up from the Hannah Herald to take pictures and interview the rubberneckers, since the chief would say no more than, “The matter is under investigation.” To be exact, what the chief said was, “You bet your beeping ass the beeping matter is under investigation,” and then he stomped off.

  “But, Chief, I can’t put that in the paper!” Robyn wailed, whereupon the chief promptly told Robyn where he could stick the Herald.

  “I’ve never seen the chief so upset,” Addy later confided to Evie. “Good thing Mama didn’t hear Mr. Potty Mouth. She’d a-gone all Bit-zoid on his butt.”

  Various opinions were espoused by the gawkers as to how Jeb got himself in such a predicament. Payback by the Paulsberg football team was the most popular theory. It was no secret the Wildcats, Hannah’s longtime sports rival, still nursed a grudge over a prank the Hannah Blue Devils had pulled three years earlier involving the Paulsberg mascot. Neb the Billy Goat was kidnapped, dipped in a vat of purple dye, outfitted with a black hooded mask, and attached to a dozen large weather balloons, the idea being to float Neb over the football field at halftime. The pranksters miscalculated Neb’s weight, and he drifted over the grandstands and into the wild blue yonder, never to be seen again.

  A Bolo went out for a purple flying goat, and animal rights activists and volunteers from five surrounding counties turned out to look for the missing mascot. Crop dusters and pilots from Montgomery to Mobile scanned the skies to no avail. Neb had vanished. The story made the Mobile paper and was picked up by the national press. Neb’s picture appeared on the front of the National Globe, under the headline FLYING PURPLE GOAT ALIEN TERRORIZES REDNECKS.

  Last fall all hell broke loose at the Paulsberg/Hannah football game when the Blue Devil fans started chanting “Spa-a-a-ce Goo-at” There was talk of ceasing competition between the two teams until things cooled off. Like in a few hundred years.

  Some folks reckoned Jeb’s statue was beamed up by space aliens and deposited in Muddy’s yard after the ETs had their wicked way with him, although sunspots, earth vortices, a message from Elvis, electromagnetism, a diabolical communist plot, and the pull of the full moon were also popular theories. Mamie Hall reckoned as how the town witch was responsible, but nobody paid her much mind. Miss Mamie blamed everything from her sciatica to the weather and the ping in her Ford Taurus engine on Cassandra Ferguson.

  It was a hot day. Addy fixed a pitcher of lemonade and carried it outside to offer the chief and the others a cold drink. Brand went with her.

  She stopped on the porch. Brand stopped, too.

  “Dude, the ‘me and my shadow routine’ is getting on my nerves. Stay here.”

  “No.”

  She set the pitcher down and put her hands on her hips. “I’ll be right over there offering those nice officers something to drink. Notice the big crowd of people? I’ll be fine.”

  “The djegrali are masters of dissemblance. They could be secreted within any of these humans.”

  She looked at the crowd milling around the front yard. They all looked pretty normal to her. Well, normal for Hannah. “So, how do you tell if someone has been possessed?”

  He shrugged. “It is difficult, especially if the demon is very clever. The djegrali crave human sensation and physical pleasure. Those possessed will often overindulge in food, drink, drugs, or sex. Some will become violent, if the demon or the human they possess has a taste for bloodshed. Sometimes, the victim acts out of character, or displays some other sort of eccentricity that gives the demon away.”

  “Hate to break it to you, but this is the South. We pride ourselves on being eccentric. You’ve got your job cut out for you.”

  “Adara, I was trying to explain how one human can tell if another human is possessed. The Dalvahni have other ways.”

  “Like what?”

  “The djegrali give off an odor when they are excited or angry.”

  “You mean they stink?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Eww. What do they smell like?”

  “It is most unpleasant, like rancid fat or something burning. I do not know how to describe the scent. Once you smell it, you will know it. It is unforgettable.” He paused. “But that is not the only means the Dalvahni have at their disposal.”

  “Ooh, Mr. Mysterious. Do tell.”

  His lips twitched. “I believe you would call it ‘woo-woo.’ ”

  “Say no more. You know that stuff gives me the creeps.”

  “My objective is to keep you safe, Adara. By any means possible. It is not my intent to annoy you or present you with the creeps. I will make myself inconspicuous.”

  He vanished.

  Addy blinked. “Brand?”

  “See? Inconspicuous,” he said in her ear, making her jump.

  “I will not get on your nerve, and you can go about your business.”

  “Nerve-zah, dude. And don’t think about copping a feel because I can’t see you.”

&nbs
p; Addy and her unseen escort approached the police officers. The area around Headless Jeb had been cordoned off by three-inch-wide yellow crime scene tape. Officer Curtis stood outside the line of tape contemplating the statue.

  “Maybe it moved on its own,” he offered at last.

  The chief gave him a scathing look. “Moved on its own how, Dan? You think the damn thing grew legs and walked here?”

  “I saw something on the Discovery channel last weekend about sliding rocks in Death Valley,” Officer Curtis said. “These rocks are on a dry lake bed, see, but they move. Leave long trails in the dirt behind them like a snail. Real creepy stuff, rocks moving on their own. I’m not talking little rocks, either. These rocks weigh like a hundred pounds. Got them brainiac scientists stumped, I can tell you that.” He shook his head. “Rocks ought not move. It ain’t natural. But it’s a known fact them rocks in Death Valley move. Look it up, if you don’t believe me. Maybe Jeb moved on his own.”

  Chief Davis’s face went from tomato red to a deep, eggplant purple. “And how, exactly, do you propose he did that?”

  “Wind. Wind’s a mighty powerful force.”

  “The wind.” Chief Davis took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair so that it stuck up in all directions. “You think the wind moved a four-ton statue.”

  “Or an ice sheet like that Agassiz glacier that flattened North Dakota like a pancake. Saw that on the Discovery channel, too.”

  “It’s a hundred degrees in the shade, Dan,” the chief said. “You could fry an egg on the sidewalk, and you think a giant sheet of ice moved into town and deposited Jeb Hannah on Miss Muddy’s front lawn and then crept back out again while I was inside her house having cake and coffee. Great Jumping Jehosephat.”

  Officer Curtis looked stubborn. “I’m just saying.”

  “And I’m just saying you’re an idiot.”

  Uh oh. Time to run interference before two of Hannah’s Finest had a smackdown in Muddy’s front yard.

  “Lemonade, Chief?” Addy asked with a bright smile. She handed the chief a glass and turned to Dan Curtis. “Dan, would you like something to drink?”

  “Thanks, Addy.”

  He took the glass without looking at her. He was too busy eyeballing the chief. Jeez, talk about your testosterone overload. The two men eyed one another like a couple of banty roosters in a barnyard. Addy was contemplating turning the garden hose on them when Brand whispered a warning in her ear.

  “Despair all ye mortals,” he said in a voice of doom. “The mama approacheth.”

  For a man with no sense of humor, he sure was turning into a wiseass.

  Less than a minute later, Mama’s car pulled up.

  “Car-lee, I brought lunch.” Mama didn’t say the chief’s name, she sang it, making it four syllables instead of two. “Carrah-lee-hee,” she said.

  Toting an oversized picnic basket, Mama picked her way across the lawn. She still wore her Sunday clothes, Addy noticed with a pang of guilt. She’d blown church off, what with the sexual marathon of the night before, and Muddy and Headless Jeb showing up, but maybe God wouldn’t tap her on the head too badly for last night’s carnal sin. Make that sins plural. More like a whole night of uninhibited, full-blown, out-and-out debauchery. Bad Girl Addy had opened up a can of Behr County whoopass on Good Girl Addy. And she didn’t regret it one little bit. No sir-ree bobtail, not a smidge. Given a choice, she’d do it all over again. And again . . . and again.

  She was officially a sex addict when it came to a certain guy. Thank goodness her God wasn’t one of those fire-and-brimstone-hellfire-and-damnation-type Supreme Beings. Her God was a laid-back kind of fellow with a sense of humor. He created the duckbilled platypus, and he let the bishop get away with wearing that funny hat. An omnipotent being with a sense of humor, if ever there was one.

  And, a good thing, too. Otherwise she’d be in deep doo-doo in the lust-as-a-sin department. Along with anger, pride, gluttony, envy, greed, and sloth, lust was one of the seven deadly sins, right? One out of seven wasn’t bad. Oh, very well. Maybe she’d been guilty of envy and anger a couple of times. She’d sure envied Ruthie Bowab that pair of neon pink roller blades Santa brought her in the fifth grade. And just looking at the Death Starr made her mad, so add anger to the list. But all in all she hadn’t done too badly in the sin department.

  Whoops, was that pride? That left gluttony, greed, and sloth. Crap, she forgot about her and Evie’s biannual mint chocolate chip ice cream binges. Six out of seven. Yikes. The jaws of hell yawned before her.

  Mama handed the picnic basket to the chief and turned her lasers on Addy. “You still wearing that wig, Addy?”

  “I told you, Mama. It’s not a wig.”

  “Hmm.” Which in Mama-speak meant We’ll talk more about this later, young lady. “Why weren’t you in church?”

  “Muddy came home, and then things got a little crazy when Old Jeb showed up.”

  Bitsy blanched. “Muddy’s here?”

  Hah, that had her on the run. Muddy did and said what she darn well pleased. Drove Mama nuts.

  “You heard from your brother this morning?” Mama tried to act casual, but Addy could see her looking out of the corner of her eye for Muddy. “He wasn’t at church, either.”

  “No, ma’am. He’s probably busy getting ready for the visitation this afternoon. I hear the Farris funeral is tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s right.” Mama returned her attention to the chief. “As awful as this must be for you, Car-lee, I can’t help but be glad about Jebediah. People at church were talking about it, and not You-Know-What.”

  “What’s that, Little Bit?” The chief sounded distracted.

  “You know . . . the unfortunate incident at Corwin’s.” Bitsy fanned herself. “I am so relieved that body showed back up and people have something else to talk about. Anyway, I figured you’d be busy at the crime scene and forget to eat, so I brought you a bite.”

  “That’s real thoughtful of you, Hibiscus.” Chief Davis took Bitsy by the arm. “Why don’t we go sit under a tree and have us a real picnic.”

  They left, and Addy turned to Officer Curtis with a smile. “More lemonade, Dan?”

  “Guck,” Officer Curtis said, staring at her.

  Addy took a step back. “You all right, Dan? Your face looks all funny.”

  He gave her a goofy grin. “You sure are pretty, Addy. Want to go out sometime? We could drive over to Namath Springs and have dinner at that I-talian restaurant there.”

  Awkward. She’d known Dan Curtis since middle school. They were friends, nothing more.

  “Thanks, Dan, but I—”

  “Hey, good looking.” Dinky Farris swaggered up. A wifebeater T-shirt exposed his stringy arms. He grinned and adjusted the bulge in his jeans. “What say you and me go for a ride in my new four-wheel-drive truck? I’ll throw a cooler of beer in the back and we can have us a par-tay.”

  Eww. Dinky Farris and his jumbo mister had asked her out.

  “Thanks, Dinky, but I’m not much of a partier.”

  Addy turned and ran like hell for the house.

  She slammed the front door and leaned against it. “Whoa, that was majorly freaky.”

  Muddy came out of the kitchen. “What’s that, dear?”

  “Dan Curtis and Dinky Farris came on to me. Dinky Farris! Gross.” She collapsed onto the couch. “And I’ve known Dan since seventh grade.”

  Muddy went to the window. “They’re gone. Is that Bitsy with Chief Davis under the tree?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “They sure look cozy.”

  “I think they’re dating.”

  “Good,” Muddy said. “Your daddy was a hard worker and a good provider, but I’d bet money that Chief is a stem winder in the sack.”

  “Muddy, puh-leeze. Do not put that image in my head.”

  Brand materialized in the middle of the living room. “The Dinky human and the other one decided to take a trip.”

  Muddy turned away fro
m the window. “Oh, Mr. Dalvahni, I didn’t hear you come in. Amasa’s in the backyard playing with Dooley. He wanted to talk to you. I’ll go get him.”

  She hurried past Addy and out the French doors.

  “What do you mean Dinky and Officer Curtis took a trip?” Addy eyed him suspiciously. “A trip where?”

  “I did not like the way they looked at you. They seemed overheated. I decided a dip in the river might cool them off.”

  “Brand, you can’t go around dumping people in the river.”

  He raised his brows. “I cannot?”

  “No. For starters, what if they don’t know how to swim? And don’t you think they’re going to wonder how they got there and start asking questions?”

  “I do not care what they do, as long as they do not look at you like that.”

  “Oh, brother,” Addy said.

  Muddy came back inside with Dooley at her heels. Dooley gave Addy a questioning look. Addy shook her head and put her finger to her lips, signaling silence. Looking slightly put out, the Lab slunk into the kitchen and flopped on the tile.

  “He’s not out there,” Muddy said. “He must have gone around to the front.” She opened the front door and looked out. “There he is by Jeb’s statue. What on earth is he doing with that wire thingy?”

  Addy got up and went to the door. “That’s his contrabulator, Muddy.”

  “Looks like a divining rod. What do you think he’s doing?”

  “No telling.” Mr. Collier looked up, and Addy waved. “Here he comes.”

  Mr. Collier hurried into the house. He seemed relieved to see Brand.

  “I’m glad you’re still here, Mr. . . . uh . . .”

  “Call me Brand.”

  Mr. Collier gave him a nervous smile. “Well, uh, Brand, I never did get a chance to talk to you this morning, what with all the excitement over Old Jeb. Been afraid you wouldn’t believe me, but now I’m sure of it.”

  “Sure of what, Amasa?” Muddy said.

  Mr. Collier fiddled with his contrabulator. “Try and keep an open mind, Edmuntina. This is going to sound crazy.”