The Boy Who Killed Demons: A Novel Page 11

  After school I had planned to follow Devin and make sure he wasn’t meeting up with Sally. I knew this would be risky. From over two and a half years of observing these demons, I knew they had an unusually strong sense of smell and that I’d have to keep a large enough distance between us so that he wouldn’t know I was there. When the class bell rang the teacher stopped me by calling me over, and like an idiot I hesitated enough to where I couldn’t pretend that I hadn’t heard her. I should’ve just left the room, except Devin hung back to see what I would do, and that screwed me up. When I went to her desk she sat silently for a good half minute acting as if I wasn’t there before reprimanding me for texting in her classroom. I had to promise her that I wouldn’t text again before she let me leave. My heart was in my throat by the time I fled her classroom and was searching the hallway to see that Devin was nowhere in sight.

  I raced around like a crazy person after that hoping to spot either Devin or Sally, and barely made it onto the bus. I had to get on to make sure that Devin and Sally weren’t on it together, and I’d been racing around so much that I was out of breath and panting when I took an empty seat next to Wesley. A couple of minutes later, after my breathing had slowed down to something more normal, Wesley asked why I wasn’t with my girlfriend. I know that the question was mostly innocent on his part, but it was like a knife to my heart. A minute later, after I hadn’t answered him, he asked if I wanted to come over and look at a new batch of comic books he had picked up over the weekend. I told him I’d like to, but that I had a lot of chemistry homework I needed to do.

  He smiled at that. “Since when did you become so dedicated with school?”

  “My parents are on my back too much for me not to be. But I’ll come over soon.”

  “Next time you’re not with Sally Freeman?”

  “That’s right.”

  He smiled thinly, but swallowed back whatever crack he was going to make. Inside I was dying. I wanted to trust her, but all I could think was that she had lied to me and that right at that moment she was with the demon Connor Devin. I nearly ran off the bus when it came to our stop, and after nodding my so longs to Wesley and Curt, I called Sally. The call rang through to voice mail. I called her again and this time she answered.

  “I told you I had a school project today,” Sally told me, her voice with a distinctive chill in it.

  “I know,” I said. “I only wanted to say hi and tell you I was missing you.”

  There was a long pause before Sally said anything. During that time I strained to listen for any demon hisses or snarls in the background. I thought I heard some, but I wasn’t sure. Finally Sally told me she had to get back to what she was doing.

  “Wait,” I near begged. I hesitated, a weakness all of a sudden making my legs feel like rubber, and a queasy sickness filling up my stomach. I knew how dangerous it would be to mention the demon Connor Devin to Sally—not just to me, but to her, as well. But I couldn’t just let her go without warning her. “Can I tell you something without you telling anyone else?” I asked.

  There was another unbearable stretch of silence on Sally’s part before she asked me what I wanted to tell her, an increasing impatience in her voice.

  “You have to promise you can’t tell anyone. It’s important. Please promise me this.”

  “Look, Henry, I don’t have time for this—”

  “Please, just promise me.”

  I could imagine how annoyed she must’ve looked right then. In my mind’s eye I could see her eyes narrowed, her lips pressed tight together, her cheeks slightly puffed out, and that image brought a lump to my throat. “Go ahead,” Sally said. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “There’s no one around you who can overhear what I’m saying?”

  “No.”

  She might’ve thought that was the case, but I didn’t know if I could trust her on that. Demons have dog-like hearing. Maybe even better. If Devin was standing five or so feet from her, he’d hear what I was telling her. I took a deep breath and struggled over whether or not to tell her about Devin. The consequences were staggering if he found out what I was telling her, but the damage that he could inflict on her if I didn’t warn her was even worse.

  “You have to promise me that you’ll keep away from Connor Devin,” I said. “If you want to break up with me, then break up with me, but whatever you do don’t get involved with him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s evil. He’ll hurt you badly”

  She laughed at that, like what I was saying was so outrageous that she couldn’t help herself.

  “Why are you saying this?” she asked.

  For a long moment I stood tongue-tied as I tried to figure out how to explain to her that he was a noxious creature from hell only disguised as something human. Finally, I stammered out, “I can sense these things. You have to believe me and take what I’m telling you on faith. I know I’m right about him.”

  In a voice that was so flat and impersonal that I barely recognized her, Sally told me she had to go, then disconnected the call. I stood paralyzed as an overwhelming sense of devastation sapped the strength out of me. My head was swimming too much for me to understand right then what it was that had left me as such a wreck, but as I played back every word of my phone call with Sally I understood what it was. It wasn’t just her tone or the indifference toward me that I heard from her, although that was a big part of it. It was that when I told her that she could break up with me if she wanted to, as long as she promised me she’d keep away from Devin, she made no attempt to tell me she wasn’t breaking up with me.

  I tried figuring out what had happened between us, and realized it could’ve been any number of things. My telling her that I suffered from depression, or my violently beating Malphi—I might not have told her how violent it was, but she had plenty of opportunities to see that he was badly battered and bruised when he came to school today. Or maybe demons have some sort of supernatural pull on girls they want to seduce. Or it could be nothing more than Sally being superficially attracted to Devin’s human guise. Whatever it was I knew in my gut I had lost her. And I knew I needed to kill Devin. Not to win Sally back, but to save her. But I still had no idea how to kill a demon, and to figure that out I needed a miracle.

  My mom’s yelling at me now to come down for dinner. Actually, she’s been yelling that for the last five minutes. I hear footsteps on the stairs; either hers or my dad’s. I need to put this journal away for now. Later tonight I’ll write about what could be my miracle.

  Wednesday, September 28th 11:00 PM

  THREE HOURS AGO I FINISHED THE SUSHI TAKEOUT DINNER MY mom brought home (I had cucumber, avocado, and asparagus maki rolls, and no fish—I’m still a vegetarian and am not budging on that), and would’ve written earlier about my possible miracle today, but Sally called me just after I had finished eating, and I’ve been playing back our conversation in my head over and over again, trying to divine any nuance or hidden meaning that I can. It’s only been the last few minutes that I’ve been able to focus on anything else.

  As soon as I picked up Sally’s call, she launched in and told me how pissed she was at me—that I had no right being suspicious of her or checking up on her or thinking that she was seeing someone behind my back. She again insisted that she had stayed after school for a legitimate school project, but she didn’t volunteer what it was, and I knew better than to ask her. I also knew better than to ask her why she didn’t tell me earlier that she wasn’t breaking up with me. At least she hadn’t been with the demon Connor Devin. If she had, she’d either be dead or hospitalized. So after she bawled me out for my bad behavior, she asked why I thought Devin was evil.

  “It’s not something I think, it’s something I know.”

  “You haven’t even talked to him, have you? Why would you think he’s evil?”

  “Sally, please, you need to take this on faith. This is something I know every bit as much as that you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever s
een.”

  “Thank you, Henry, but that’s not good enough. You can’t tell me that you can just look at Connor and know that about him. So what do you know about him that allows you to tell me that he’s evil?”

  I couldn’t think of how to answer that, and after an awkward, painful silence that seemed to last forever, she gave up waiting for me.

  “Henry,” she said, her voice turning patronizing, “if you’re saying this about Connor because you’re jealous, you have no reason to be. I’m not so superficial that I want to go out with him just because he’s good looking.”

  I laughed at that. I couldn’t help myself.

  “So you think I am that superficial?” Sally asked, her voice quickly turning frigid.

  “No, come on. I laughed because he’s not as good looking as you think. At least not if you saw him the way I do.”

  “How do you see him?”

  How could I tell her that I saw him as a god-awful demon? “This one thing, please, just trust me. Keep away from him. He’s dangerous. It’s not something I think, but something I know. If you were to dump me for anyone else, I wouldn’t be saying this to you. But I don’t want to see you hurt, and Connor Devin will hurt you if you let him near you.” I hesitated for a moment, then found enough of my voice to ask if she was dumping me.

  “No,” Sally said. “But I can’t deal with the way you’re acting now. Not believing me when I tell you I’m staying after school to work on a class project, or saying that you can look at someone and know what’s inside them, or telling me the crazy things you’re telling me about Connor. Or beating up Ralph Malphi. The way he looks, you almost killed him! I like you Henry. I’ve liked you for a long time. But I need you to act normal. So we need to take a break, and after our break, you can’t tell me any more of the bizarre things you’ve been telling me. And you can’t act jealous anymore or keep making things up about Connor.”

  “How long is the break going to be?”

  “I don’t know. But when it’s over, you can’t act the way you’ve been acting, Henry.”

  After that I thought I heard her start to cry, and she quickly whispered goodbye and got off the phone, and I kept playing the conversation over in my head, trying to decipher every possible meaning that I could from it. Was she calling to tell me where we stood, or to find out what I really knew about the demon Connor Devin? And were we really on a break, or was she just dumping me? All of this left me agonizing, but it would’ve been much worse if something else hadn’t happened today, something that gave me hope that I’d be able to kill the demon Connor Devin. It would be crushing knowing that if I killed him and got caught, I’d never see Sally again. But at least she’d be safe. At least I’d have that.

  Let me explain my possible miracle. First, though, I need to go back to this afternoon after I’d gotten off the phone with Sally, when I begged her to keep away from Devin. For minutes after that call I stood still, too devastated and weak to even move. Then desperation slowly set in, and I knew I had to do something, anything, to figure out how to kill Devin. So I got on my bike and rode towards Boston.

  I got to Cornwall’s a little before five o’clock. I was sweating after my bike ride—my face flushed as I locked my bike against an iron ring embedded in the brick outer wall of the building that Cornwall’s was in. That ring must have once been used to hitch horses.

  It had been weeks since I’d visited Cornwall’s, maybe the longest I’d gone ASD. Dorthop was sitting at the cluttered oak desk by the front door where he always sat when I went there, reading one of his books and wearing the same dirty clothes he always wore. He looked his same disheveled and scowling self, with those same ridiculously thick forearms on display. Without looking up from his book, he said in a voice like gravel being scraped against a road, “I thought you gave up on this occult business and moved on to healthier pursuits.”

  “Nope, I’ve just been busy with school and stuff. Any new additions to the collection?”

  For a minute Dorthop acted as if he didn’t hear me as he continued to stare intently at his book. After he turned the page he grunted out that he’d added one new book recently. I waited for another half a minute, and once I realized he wasn’t going to volunteer which book that was, I turned and headed for the secret alcove where he kept his occult collection.

  “You won’t find it back there,” he grunted after I’d taken a couple of steps away from him. After first carefully placing an antique leather bookmarker to hold his place, he put his book down and shifted his gaze towards me. With his thick, heavy face straining as if he were exerting himself, he pulled a heavy set of keys from his pocket, then making more grunt-like noises, he bent forward so most of him was obscured by his desk. I heard a key turning a lock, then what must’ve been safe tumblers being worked, and finally a metal door being opened. Dorthop then straightened in his chair and placed an ancient, blood-red leather-bound book carefully on his desk, the title of which was engraved in gold leaf. I took several steps before I realized what it was. A copy of L’Occulto Illuminato. My voice cracked as I asked him if it was genuine. He didn’t bother answering me.

  “How did you get it?” I asked, my voice barely coming out as a whisper.

  He smiled, exposing his few rotted teeth. “Uh, uh,” he said, shaking his head, “That’s not something I’m about to share with you or anyone else.”

  My palms were sweating like crazy, but my throat had become as dry as a handful of sand. I tried to swallow, but couldn’t. I could barely even force out a whisper then.

  “Is it whole? No pages missing?”

  “No pages missing. None torn either. A perfectly readable copy.”

  “How much?”

  His smile disappeared, his eyes quickly deadening. “Twenty-five thousand.”

  I knew I stood there blinking stupidly at him, but I couldn’t help myself. It was as if I’d been punched smack in the face. I should’ve been expecting that type of price. I knew how rare the book was. But still, it didn’t make any sense to me. He had to know I couldn’t raise that kind of money, so why’d he even bother showing me the book? Simply to torture me? For a fleeting moment I thought of grabbing the book and making a run for it, but I knew I wouldn’t get far.

  “I can’t get twenty-five thousand,” I stammered out.

  “That’s too bad,” he said. His expression remained detached, and he showed no indication that he felt badly at all. “I can sell L’Occulto like this for that price.” He snapped two fingers, the sound harsh in the room, like bones being broken. “I know how much you wanted it, so I thought I’d give you first crack at it.”

  He was lying. He knew I wouldn’t be able to pay twenty-five thousand, so he had to have another reason for wanting to show me the book, but I had no idea what it could be. I tried to wet my lips but all the moisture was gone from my mouth. I needed to think of something, anything. The book was too important to lose.

  “How about I pay you a thousand dollars for a translation,” I said. “That’s all I have.”

  He didn’t bother answering me. He gently picked up the book and put it back in the safe he had under his desk. I heard the metal door closing and the tumblers being spun. Whatever chance I had to try to overpower him and grab the book was gone. When he straightened back up in his chair, he resumed his reading as if he had never shown me a copy of L’Occulto Illuminato. I stood paralyzed, my mind racing as I tried to think of some way that I could get that book. After several minutes passed, he warned me that if I was thinking of breaking into his store for L’Occulto Illuminato I was out of luck. “Even if you got into my store, not a chance in the world you’d be able to break into that safe. It’s cemented to the floor, so you ain’t moving it either.”

  The thought had crossed my mind. A year ago I had bought burglar picks off the Internet, and I’d been practicing picking locks. It seemed like a prudent thing to do—it could very well be a skill that I might need in my battle with these damn demons. Over the last year I’d
gotten pretty good at it. But even if I could pick the desk cabinet door lock to gain access to his safe, I had no idea what I’d do next. A thought did come to me. Kind of a sickening thought, but it was the only way I saw to get L’Occulto Illuminato.

  “I could trade you for it,” I said. I hesitated for only a moment before adding, “A first edition of Spider-Man.”

  He looked up from his book then and studied me carefully. “Mint condition?” he asked.

  I nodded. All of Wesley’s dad’s comic books were in mint condition. All stored away in plastic bags. Wesley wasn’t allowed to take that one out of the bag, but he showed it to me once, and I remember the cover looking like it was brand new. I had no idea what it was worth, but I guessed from Dorthop’s interest it had to be worth at least twenty-five thousand.

  “Bring it here tomorrow,” he said.

  “Can you give me two weeks?”