The Hag

by Erik Henry Vick

  His fury mounted with each expelled pellet, and his rage thrummed in time to each wingbeat in the thinning air. In the distance, a giant column of black smoke marked the place where Herlequin had died.

  Looking at it gave LaBouche a perverse sense of satisfaction but at the same time a profound sense of loss. Herlequin had been…not quite a father-figure, not quite a friend, but someone to look up to. A standard.

  Brigitta, though… LaBouche forgot and shook his tiny yellow head and tumbled for a moment in the onrushing wind. I hate being a damn bird! I’m going to add Brigitta’s name to Scotty’s’ and whoever that punk with the shotgun was.

  LaBouche rarely held a grudge, but when he did…he really held a grudge. As he flew, not knowing exactly where to go, only knowing he had to get away from those idiots and the damn shotgun, he considered what he might do to them—to the people on his list.

  I’ve already cleaned out Scotty’s immediate family, so not much to do there. Cripple him? Leave him able to think, to plan, to remember, but unable to act? It was something to consider. The idiot with the shotgun will be much easier. All I need do is track down his family, and I can inflict my revenge for these goddamn pellets!

  Brigitta though…he’d have to be careful taking his revenge on her. She was powerful in a way that eclipsed even Herlequin—though she lacked the old demon’s style. He could not ignore the indignity of changing him into a little yellow magpie, though. No, I’ll need something special for the first daughter of Herlequin. Something that will send a message to every other old demon on the planet. Something that says, ‘Don’t fuck with LaBouche.’ He tried to grin at the thought, momentarily forgetting that a stupid little beak had replaced his mouth.

  LaBouche needed a safe place to hide until he convinced Brigitta to change him back, to give him the power to create illusions again. He was helpless—a tiny little yellow thing with no strength and no way to hide his nature. At the same time, he still needed nourishment. Perhaps…if I can stay out of sight…

  He angled his wings and banked toward Oneka Falls.

  3

  Benny, Shannon, and Toby climbed into the red BMW, planning to retrieve Toby’s Odin Desperado from its hiding place on the other side of Oneka Falls. Mike and Scott took the Jeep and headed straight back to Rochester. Both vehicles took the long way around Oneka Falls, not willing to risk an encounter with the town’s demons.

  They needed time and space to plan, to rest, and to gather their resources. The fight to clean up Oneka Falls was going to be a long one. A hard one.

  “Penny,” said Shannon from the backseat.

  Toby glanced at Benny in the passenger seat, but Benny, too, was staring at Toby. “What?”

  “She means she wants—‍”

  “I understand what ‘penny for your thoughts’ means, Benny. I meant why are you both staring at me.”

  “Your thoughts—‍” said Shannon.

  “—are so dark—‍” said Benny.

  “—so bitter, so—‍”

  “—ugly and angry—‍”

  “—full of pain…”

  Toby shook his head, a sour grin on his lips. “That’s cute. And when I say cute, what I really mean is that it makes me want to deafen myself with a pencil. Can we expect more of this ‘gee-we’re-so-cute-don’t-you-just-want-to-die’ nonsense from you two?”

  At least Benny had the good grace to blush, Shannon only laughed. “We can’t help it,” she said.

  “Are you going to play the twins card now? You’re not, you know.”

  “Twins card? Toby, you know Shannon is not my sister, let alone my twin—‍”

  Shannon’s hand snaked over Benny’s shoulder and squeezed it lightly. “He knows that, Benny. It’s that twins often finish each—‍”

  “—other’s sentences. Oh, I see. Another one of his jokes.” Benny held up one hand on each side of his face and made the quote gesture with his fingers.

  “Yes, my—‍” Shannon’s teeth snapped together with an audible click. “Benny, slap me every time I say that.”

  Benny turned a startled glance on Toby.

  “Figure of speech, Ben.”

  “It’s ‘Benny.’”

  “I don’t want to say that anymore. I don’t want to imitate…her.” Thunder clouds rippled across Shannon’s expression. “I absolutely detest that I spent so many years mimicking Gray and that…that zombie-faced bitch! It’s bad enough…it’s bad enough saying the words, let alone the fact that I’m repeating the words because she said them all the time to him. How did I get so screwed up?”

  “Shannon, you’re not—‍”

  “We all were, Shan. Hell, I couldn’t even remember any of it. I ran around killing demons like some kind of…some kind of serial killer without even knowing why—‍”

  “Except you did. You chased them because they were hurting people, killing people,” said Benny.

  “—I was doing it! And at the same time, feeling it was…it was wrong.”

  “But at least you did something, Toby. I sat around and pined after a man I knew was a homosexual but pretended was straight. I thought about cleaning all the time. Fantasized about it, even. Anything to keep my mind busy, to keep from thinking, to keep from…”

  “Remembering.” Benny shifted position so that his back was against the door, and he could see both of them with a small turn of his head. “Was I any better? Hiding out in a locked psychiatric facility, pretending I was Toby? All so I didn’t have to be out here in the world facing the things that you two were?” Benny shook his head and followed it with a sweeping motion of his hand as if pushing all the arguments to the side. “No, we did what we had to do. None of us was ready to confront Herlequin. He would’ve eaten us if we had. You both know that as well as I do. We needed—‍”

  “But, we could—‍”

  “No! We needed time to…to let this—‍” Benny drew a triangle in the air, connecting each of them together. “—‍develop. And, we needed Mike. We—‍”

  “Scott, too. Without him, Owen Gray would still be out there. And if he hadn’t scared Brigitta away, she’d have seen through my…my…my whatever-you-call-it, my illusion, and she would have scratched my eyes out for real.”

  Benny shrugged. “Okay, we needed Mike and Scott. The point—‍”

  “Still do,” muttered Toby.

  “Granted. We need them. They complete us in a way that may not be apparent yet. But my point was none of us—not at eleven, not at fifteen, not at twenty-one—could have gone against Herlequin and the demons in Oneka Falls. We wouldn’t have stood a chance.” Benny shrugged and ran his hand through his now-neatly trimmed hair. For a moment, he looked confused, but then he flashed a smile at Shannon. “We’re better together.”

  “No question about it,” she said.

  “I’m just tired,” said Toby. “Don’t mind my mister-grumpy-britches routine. I’m not used to being around people for so long.”

  “You’ll get used to us,” said Benny brightly.

  “I suppose I’ll have to.”

  He pulled the red BMW into the barn behind his motorhome. “Why don’t the two of you drive this car back, and I’ll bring the motorhome?”

  Benny looked stricken. “I never learned to drive.”

  With a wide grin, Shannon stuck her head between the two bucket seats in the front. “I did!”

  Chuckling, Toby popped open the driver side door and got out. He turned and bent over so he could look Benny in the eye. “Here’s some food for thought, Benny. What if others are out there that we need? Others like Scott and Mike? How do we find them?”

  Benny opened his mouth to speak, but Toby held up his hand to stop him. “Food for thought, remember?”

  4

  The demon who called himself Chaz Welsh raged through the town hall building. The demons who worked there took one look at him and ducked for cover—at least the ones with enough awareness to sense trouble coming.

  Sally McBride stood chatting
with one of the human secretaries. She was smiling and laughing as if nothing were happening outside.

  Acting the fool again! I should send her back—let the Four deal with her! It would serve her right after she screwed up so badly at Play Time.

  The human Sally was talking to glanced over Sally’s shoulder and retreated into the depths of the planning department. Sally’s spine went rigid, and she quivered. It started in the tips of her fingers, then extended to her hands, wrists, and elbows. Her whole torso shook, and soon after that, her knees were knocking. “Ch-Ch-Chaz?”

  “In my office, Sally,” he growled. “And stop calling me Chaz! We aren’t friends. I’m your—‍” He glanced around and lowered his voice. “I’m your superior.”

  “I…uh…I…have to get back to the phones! I can’t leave them unattended, Mr. Welsh. We could speak after—‍”

  “Alternately, I could send you home now, Sally,” he said with quiet menace. “All the way home.”

  “No! Please don’t say that. Your office is fine.” She scurried toward the town manager’s office, her fat legs pumping.

  “Goddamn right!” Chaz snapped under his breath, but he kept a pleasant expression on the face of his visage. No doubt Sally was broadcasting her fear to half the world, but he was starting to think he couldn’t expect much from Fuck-it-up McBride.

  He followed her into his office, pausing only long enough to put the do not disturb sign on the outside of his doorknob. The door closed with a metallic snick. Chaz always thought it sounded like a giant pair of snippers slicing through a human finger. He turned slowly, enjoying McBride’s palpable fear, feeding off it.

  His laconic gaze scanned the doodads—the junk—with which he decorated his office. He delayed the moment of eye contact, enjoying how the delay heightened Sally’s fear. He heaved a sigh and muttered, “What am I to do with you?” As soon as the last word left his mouth, he snapped his gaze to hers and bored into her eyes with the not insignificant totality of his will.

  Sally whimpered and took a step back, her hands coming up as if to defend herself—though there was nothing she could do to protect herself from Chaz. “What?” she screeched.

  Chaz made a chopping motion through the air. “Keep it down, Fuck-it-up,” he hissed. “If anyone hears you…” He poured as much vitriol and menace into his voice as he could muster.

  Sally’s eyes darted toward the closed door to the hall, and Chaz almost hoped she would make a run for it. He was in the mood to chase something—to chase something down and kill it with his teeth. When Sally’s gaze returned to his face, she must’ve seen his thoughts, seen how much he wanted to run her down. She sank to the floor on her knees and whimpered, “What have I done?”

  Chaz brought his thick, scaled fists up in front of him, shaking them in rage. “Do you really not know?” His voice sounded similar to a cross between an industrial boiler about to blow and metal grinding against metal at very high speed.

  Sally whimpered and dropped her gaze to a point halfway between them. “No, my lord! I’m stupid. You know that. If I’ve done something—‍”

  “Shut…your…fucking…mouth!” Chaz leaned his bulk against the desk he’d modified to support such a maneuver. He held up an index finger, which any demon could see ended in a massive, gleaming claw. “If you speak again—no, scratch that. If you make another noise, I’m going to really hurt you, Sally. Once I’m finished, I’ll send you somewhere where you will truly learn what pain is. I’ll send you to them, gift wrapped and sporting a ribbon.”

  She opened her mouth but snapped it shut and nodded instead.

  “Since your idiocy knows no bounds, let me tell you what has happened. But you know what? You should work on your situational awareness, McBride! It’s not as if anything that happened isn’t right there in the ether for any of us to sense!”

  Sally gazed up at him, tears glimmering in her eyes. She lifted her hands and let them drop listlessly.

  “Herlequin is dead, you ridiculous sack of pus! Dead!” he raged, springing to his feet without meaning to. He towered over her, his hands clenching into fists and releasing—clenching and releasing, clenching and releasing. His breath cycled in and out of his massive chest, sounding for all the world like a bellows driven by a motor. “They have sent him back!”

  McBride shook her head, eyes wide, terror written on her face.

  Chaz extended his hand, putting his claws in her face, almost touching her left eye with his claw-tipped right index finger. “What’s more, they scared Brigitta off with a…a trick! They arrested Brigitta’s pet—a useless human piece of trash that one is! He never even fired a shot! All that talk…all that boasting…”

  With a start, Chaz realized he had punctured Sally’s left eye, and a viscous pale-green ooze dripped down her cheek. Her face blazed with pain, but her lips remained sealed.

  “You might not be as stupid as I first thought, McBride.”

  5

  From his stoop on a branch in the maple tree outside the town hall, LaBouche watched as Chaz assaulted Sally McBride. It was sweet—not as sweet as torturing Lewis’ daughter, but satisfying, nonetheless. He felt almost sated as McBride crawled out of the office on her knees. The emotions of demons did not taste as good as the emotions of humans, but they would do in a pinch.

  He could feel her shame, her pain, and her indignation wafting off her like perfume. Chaz slumped behind his large desk, not doing anything, only sitting and staring at his hands.

  Approaching him is suicidal in my current form. Unless… His tiny black eyes flew to the door of Welsh’s office as it slid quietly shut. Unless I had an in-between…someone I could cow. Someone such as that idiot who just crawled away like a slave.

  LaBouche took wing, angling around the building to roost on the overhang above the door to the parking lot. He waited there, shifting from foot to foot with impatience, and resisting the urge to go root for insects in the dirt. I will get you for this, Brigitta!

  He hadn’t long to wait. McBride pushed her way through the door, crying quietly. She was a hideous thing—almost porcine in body structure, with sickly pink skin practically identical to that of the humans, large oval-shaped eyes—well, eye thanks to Chaz’s most recent alteration—over a full mouth surrounded by thick, sausage-like lips that always seemed too moist as if coated with a natural oil. She walked with a distinctive gait—as if she usually ran on all fours, but out in public put on airs and walked on her hind legs. Tiny stubs—malformed wings—adorned her upper back, and a short nub of a tail finished off the look.

  McBride sickened him, and the thought of spending time near her made him want to gouge his own eyes out with a dull piece of metal. He watched her sink into her beat-up, old green Chevy. This could be a terrible idea.

  The green heap shuddered and clattered to life, belching a mixture of blue and black smoke mixed with wisps of white steam into the parking lot. McBride sat for a moment as if waiting for the car to warm up, but no amount of warming up could still that shivering beast.

  She rolled down the driver’s side window and leaned across the long bench seat to open the passenger side as well. With Sally otherwise occupied, LaBouche dove off the overhang and angled his wings to flit right through the open driver’s side window and land on the floor in the backseat.

  The scent was atrocious: a mixture of rotting skin, defecation, and—strangely—potpourri. To his tiny olfactory apparatus, the odor was overpowering, almost incapacitating. He breathed through his open beak.

  Brigitta chose this. She made me into this idiotic parody. I will need something exceptional for her.

  The ride to McBride’s home seemed to take a year. The stench of the car was horrible, but what was genuinely intolerable was McBride’s penchant of singing show tunes at the top of her sour voice.

  When the tires finally thumped up over the curb and rolled through gravel, LaBouche readied himself. Chances were that McBride would leave the windows open—she didn’t strike him as one w
ho cared much about material possessions—but if she didn’t, he needed to be ready to dart through a closing door.

  McBride killed the clattering engine, and it was a relief to LaBouche’s tiny ears. He hopped up on the seat cushion in the back and waited. She sat there a moment, muttering to herself.

  He didn’t catch much of it, but what he caught of it proved that McBride wasn’t devoid of a strong sense of vengeance, but she was devoid of any kind of backbone. She opened the driver’s side door and got out, leaving both the driver’s side and the passenger window open.

  As she walked away from the car, LaBouche took wing and flew out the window. He approached her from behind, his little black eyes scanning their surroundings. He swooped down and landed on her shoulder, and she stifled a scream.

  “Oh, look at the pretty little bird!” she crooned.

  Are you as stupid as you look? he thought at her. It’s not an act you put on for Welsh?

  Oh.

  Is that all? A demon in the shape of a tiny yellow bird lands on your shoulder and speaks into your mind, and that’s the best you can do? I see why Chaz treats you as a servant.

  McBride turned her face away, but not before LaBouche saw the sneer form. What do you want? she asked in as toneless a mental voice as LaBouche had ever heard.

  Want? What does it matter what I want? LaBouche cocked his tiny yellow head to the side. Has he bound you?

  What? Who?

  Chaz. Who else might have bound you?

  Herlequin.

  Yes, but he’s dead, isn’t he? Any binding Herlequin had over you died with him. LaBouche sensed an utter, black depression inside her at the thought of Herlequin’s death. They broke the mold after they made him, he thought at her.

  He was one of the best.

  No doubt, no doubt. He rode on her shoulder in silence for a moment, pretending to be as caught up in his sadness as she appeared to be in her own. But Chaz…well, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this, but he’s no Herlequin.