The Boy Who Killed Demons: A Novel Read online

  Each day after school I walk with Sally until I’m a couple of blocks from my house, then we separate so I can cut through yards, which allows me to get home without passing by the demon Hanley’s house, and Sally continues on to her home. Today she asked me if I’d come over to her house with her so we could study Italian together, and I told her I would. It got quiet after that as we continued walking. Not an uncomfortable quiet, but an intense quiet. I didn’t quite understand the reason for it, but I felt a hotness throughout my body. When I looked at Sally, I could see an intensity burning in her eyes, her face pale and very serious. She looked younger then. Without realizing it her hand found mine and the rest of the way we held hands, hers small and almost feverish in mine.

  Sally lives off of Waban Avenue, which is on the south side of Beacon Street, past Waban Square and Angier School. The houses on her street were far more modest than the McMansions my parents and most of our neighbors owned. They seemed more real—like what houses should be. Her parents’ house was a ranch style, which Sally told me was built in the fifties. It was much smaller than my parents’, but I liked it better—it felt more solid and substantial. Sally took me to her room. It had such a girly, feminine feel to it, the bed covered with this big, fluffy quilt, everything surrounded by stuffed animals and pillows and other frilly things. It just felt so perfect for Sally, and it smelled wonderful too, just like she did. I couldn’t believe I was there alone with her. No one else was in the house. I tried not to think of that. Instead I sat on the beanbag chair opposite her bed, and took out my Italian course book while Sally sat cross-legged on her bed, also with her course book out. And we spent the next twenty minutes reading our assigned lesson and talking about it.

  I found myself feeling better than I’ve ever felt in my life being in that room with her. More than that, it felt so right. But I also felt as if my skin was burning up even hotter than before. And when I looked at Sally, at how beautiful and natural and relaxed she looked sitting on her bed, I got an erection. I couldn’t help it. It was embarrassing, and I tried hiding it with how I sat and with how I held my textbook. I tried making myself think of something else—demons, anything—but it didn’t help. In my mind’s eye all I could see was Sally sitting cross-legged on her bed, her long brown hair hanging over her left eye.

  There was a tug on my textbook. Sally had left her bed and was on the floor next to me and was taking my text book out of my hands. I let her. I didn’t say anything as she smiled wickedly at me and started to unzip my pants. It was only when she reached inside them that I squirmed and told her we shouldn’t be doing this.

  “It’s no big deal,” she said, her smile growing. “I want to do this. And you’ll like it.”

  “We’re too young.”

  “I’m not.” Her fingers grazed my penis and felt how hard it had become, and her smile turned impish. “And Henry, you’re clearly not either. Siediti. Godetevi.”

  She was telling me in Italian to sit back and relax. We hadn’t gone over those verbs yet in class, so she must’ve been planning this ahead of time. I knew those words only because I’d been studying extra in case Cornwall’s found a copy of L’Occulto Illuminato, and I was six chapters ahead. I did as she asked, and found myself terrified but also filled with this intense longing for her. What I was most terrified about was that I would disappoint and disgust Sally, that she’d want nothing to do with me after this. That this was some sort of test of character and I was failing it miserably. But I couldn’t push her away, and soon she had my penis out and her tongue and then lips on it, while her large brown eyes remained fixed on mine.

  It was the look in her eyes that did the trick more than anything else, and it was over almost before it started. Sally was finishing up when we heard the front door being opened and Mrs. Freeman calling out to see if Sally was home. Sally had left the door to her room wide open and her face flushed with excitement over the prospect of us getting caught. She giggled and flashed me this smile as if we were co-conspirators in some great crime. Whatever was left of my erection disappeared instantly. By the time Sally’s mom stuck her head in the door, I was zipped up with the Italian course book in my hands, and Sally was back sitting cross-legged on her bed. Sally smiled innocently and told her mom that we were studying together.

  Mrs. Freeman gave Sally and then me this icy stare, as if she were trying to penetrate our minds. Somehow I held it together, but when she inhaled deeply, I thought I might pass out. I was sure she’d be able to smell what had just happened seconds earlier. Coldly, she told me that I needed to head home, that she wanted to talk to her daughter alone. I tried to act as innocently as Sally looked as I put my book back into my backpack and pushed myself off the beanbag chair. Mrs. Freeman had to step aside so I could go past her. When I got to the door I nodded so long to Sally, who did the same, looking as innocent as if all we’d been doing was studying. My heart was pounding so hard in my chest that I could barely hear above it.

  I felt sick to my stomach as I walked home. Sally’s mom must’ve known what had happened. If she hadn’t smelled the aftereffects of sex, she’d probably find signs of it on the beanbag chair. I didn’t care about what trouble I might get into, but I was terrified that I’d be banned from seeing Sally again. The thought of that made me nauseous.

  Sally called me fifteen minutes ago on her cell phone. We’re in the clear. Her mom doesn’t want us alone together in her bedroom again, but if she suspects anything she kept it to herself. I almost burst out crying I was so relieved, but somehow I managed to play it cool. Sally ended the call by telling me how she couldn’t wait to see me again.

  So you can see why this is significant. There’s no hope for me. I can’t do this demon stuff anymore. Not after what happened today. I can’t give Sally up. It’s just not fair to ask me to.

  It wasn’t fair to give this responsibility to a thirteen-year-old boy in the first place. I tried over the last two and a half years. I really did, but I just can’t do this anymore. At this point I’ll try to find Virgil and figure out if he’s legitimate or not. If he is, I’ll give him this journal and hope it helps him. If he’s not, then that’s that. When I see Hanley and other demons, I’ll just pretend they’re like everyone else. There’s nothing else I can do.

  I’ll keep this journal going until I’m able to figure out what’s up with Virgil, and then I’m out.

  Tuesday, September 20th 12:15 AM

  VIRGIL MIGHT BE DEAD. FORGET MIGHT. I’M CONVINCED HE is—well, at least ninety-nine point nine percent convinced. That’s not all. Another nearly four-year-old kid was taken. This time a boy. I’ll explain about Virgil first.

  Late last Thursday night I sent Virgil another message. I was getting antsy thinking about him. I don’t want this demon stuff hanging over my head, so if Virgil was on the level and also saw demons, I wanted to give him my journal—after first expunging all references to my identity, which would have to include all mention of the demon Hanley. If Virgil gave me a name and address that checked out, I’d hide my journal somewhere in Boston, send him a message letting him know where he could find it, and at that point I’d be done. If Virgil ended up being a demon, that would be unfortunate. But at least I would’ve tried.

  That was my plan. I don’t want months to go by only to have Virgil contact me out of the blue and drag me back into this demon business. To use an expression my dad likes to repeat, I want to wash my hands of it once and for all.

  I know what you’re thinking. I could’ve just gotten rid of my message board account, and I would’ve been done with it. But I couldn’t do that. Not with the possibility of giving my journal to someone who sees demons the way I do. So I sent Virgil a second message, and then checked Friday morning and late Friday night to see if he had sent anything back. Nothing. Same with Saturday, Sunday, and this morning. Again nothing. Then today when I got home after spending the afternoon with Sally I saw on the Internet the story of a nearly four-year-old boy taken from his mother during a ca
rjacking in Chelsea. Chelsea and Revere are close enough to each other that that made me start thinking more about Virgil, about whether something might’ve happened to him. And that led me to an article buried in the back pages of the Boston Globe from two and a half weeks ago.

  September 2nd. Revere. Revere Police and the US Coast Guard found a body late last night off of Revere Beach. Police received a call just after 8 p.m. about a possible sighting of a body in the water. The State Police working in conjunction with the Revere Police had dispatched a marine unit, a dive team, and a helicopter for the search. The Coast Guard said in a statement that a 47-foot utility boat and a 25-foot rescue boat were to assist at the scene.

  The victim was not identified. A Revere Police spokesman, Walter Jenson, warned how this tragedy underscores the dangers of drinking and boating.

  The article gave no clue whether the victim was a male or female, the age, or anything else, but I didn’t know anything about Virgil either, so none of that mattered. After more searches I found another article that ran in the September 5th edition of the Globe. The police had ruled the death an accidental drowning, with the victim a thirty-four-year-old male, with a blood alcohol level of point two percent. The body was found less than a mile from the address of the demon that I had given Virgil. I had no concrete evidence, but I knew instantly that this person’s death was no accident. It had to be Virgil. Somehow the demon had discovered Virgil spying on him and had known that he’d been seen for what he was. That’s what had to have happened. After that the demon must’ve subdued Virgil and made him drink that alcohol before drowning him in the ocean. I suspected this immediately, but once I saw that the police had identified the victim and what his name was, I knew it was my Virgil. Vincent Robert Gilman. Get it? He used his name to form his message board identity. VI from Vincent, R from his middle name, and GIL from his last name. When I read more about him, there was no doubt. The article stated that Vincent Gilman was a loner with no wife or girlfriend. According to his parents, he had been an outgoing boy until the age of thirteen, when he suddenly became withdrawn and aloof. Later as an adult, he worked odd jobs and had the reputation of being an eccentric; someone who kept to himself and always carried a camera with him as he walked the streets. There were hints in the article that he probably suffered from schizophrenia, although the writer begrudgingly admitted he had never been diagnosed as having any mental illness. Real nice of them to make those innuendos, huh?

  Nobody they talked to knew why he would’ve been at Revere Beach that night. According to his parents, he had never demonstrated any interest in boating or the ocean, and nobody knew of any friends there or anywhere else. But I knew the reason. Vincent Gilman had dedicated his life to trying to do something about these demons, and because of that he was now dead, dismissed as an unbalanced loner who had most likely been mentally ill. Of course, I couldn’t prove that this was the same man who had contacted me on the message board as Virgil, but I knew it was, just as I knew that his fate was the very same one in store for me if I kept trying to battle these demons. There was just no way of winning that battle. No way for any one person to do that, especially a fifteen-year-old boy.

  Even though I had decided to give up this demon business, understanding that Virgil had not only been legit but was now dead left me in a cold, dark despair. I had never felt so alone as I did right then. To think that there had been someone else like me, and now that person was dead and gone and that I was in a way responsible for his death . . . I wanted to burn this journal and bury its ashes. I wanted to get rid of any trace that I’d ever admitted to seeing demons. But I couldn’t. As much as I wanted to be done with this I couldn’t force myself. I was happy being with Sally, with being normal again. But then I thought about the abducted boy. The boy might not have anything to do with Ginny Cataldo. And both of these abductions might be isolated incidents without any connection to these demons. But how could I just ignore this after the demon who masqueraded as Clifton Gibson and the evil that happened in Brooklyn? This could be the same thing all over again, except now happening in the Boston area.

  There’s not much to say about the abduction of the boy, Trey Wilkerson. The news reports so far have been sketchy. Trey’s two months short of his fourth birthday. His mother had him strapped into the child seat in the back of a beat-up 1998 Chevy Malibu. She had the car parked in a strip mall parking lot in Chelsea, and as she opened the driver’s side door, she was rushed from behind and thrown down, and the car was then driven off. Whoever did this didn’t bother with her pocketbook, and I checked the Blue Book value of the car, and it’s under three thousand dollars. It’s possible all the carjacker wanted was the car, but he must’ve seen her strapping Trey into the back child seat. Who’d risk a kidnapping charge on a beat-up Chevy Malibu? The car wasn’t the target. It was the boy. And I can’t help thinking that his abduction was connected with Ginny Cataldo—especially with the ages of both of them so close to the demon Clifton Gibson’s victims. I can’t shake this sickening feeling that demons are responsible for this. That they’re trying to finish whatever they were interrupted with in Brooklyn.

  So that’s why I can’t just burn this journal. I have to try to find someone else like me. Someone who sees them. I don’t know what good it will do, but I have to at least try. Maybe I can run another ad, and then I’ll be really finished.

  Unrelated to this demon business. I’ve been riding my bike every day to school now. I’ve been doing this so I won’t get picked up by Sally’s mom when she drives Sally each morning. Sally thinks I’m being ridiculous, but I just can’t imagine sitting there in the car with her mom, not after what she almost caught Sally and me doing that afternoon, and especially not after what Sally and I have been doing after school every day in the woods behind a private golf course. I can’t shake the thought that if I got in the car, her mom would start questioning me and I’d crack.

  So now I ride my bike each morning, and Sally waves to me when she and her mom drive past, an impish grin etched on her face. After school each day, she squeezes onto the bike seat with me and holds on tight as I pedal her first to the golf course and then later to her house, although I let her off a block away so her mom doesn’t catch us.

  I also know Ralph Malphi is still looking for me. Curt brings it up almost every day, and Wesley’s been talking about it, too. I know they’re both jealous of me and Sally, but when I see them in the hallway they try to act as if nothing’s going on, and I don’t tell them anything.

  But they tell me about the threats Malphi’s been making. I’ve seen Malphi a couple of times in school hallways, but I’m always able to see him before he sees me and have been able to avoid him so far. It’s not because I’m afraid of that knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. Part of me wants to confront him and be done with him—but I also don’t want the consequences of what would happen if I stood up to him, because I certainly wouldn’t just stand there acting defenseless. If I confronted him I’d probably end up being suspended from school, and I’m not going to let that happen. Not now that I’ve decided to ignore the demons and act as if I’m normal again. Also, if I were suspended, I’d see Sally a lot less. So I’m choosing to avoid him. This morning he was hanging around the bike racks waiting for me, but he didn’t see me. I made sure of that. It was almost funny watching him glare angrily at each bike in turn, trying to figure out which one was mine. He was probably contemplating vandalizing all of them, but then a teacher stopped by to ask him what he was doing, and Malphi ended up trudging back into the school, his large wide face muddled with petulant rage. I waited for a few minutes before riding up to the bike rack and locking my bike up.

  Maybe at some point Malphi will forget about me. Maybe not. We’ll see.

  Monday, September 26th 4:15 PM

  MY WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN TODAY. COMPLETELY AND utterly upside down. I know what you must be thinking. That I’m only fifteen and that kids my age like to exaggerate, and that’s what I’m doing now. Well, no
, not even close. This isn’t some sort of teenage hormone-induced drama play.

  A new student was brought into our homeroom. Supposedly his name is Connor Devin, and the story we were told is that he had just moved to the area. They didn’t tell us where he lived before, and Devin didn’t volunteer the information, but I knew where he really came from. Hell. Because Connor Devin is a demon. And I know it’s no accident that he was put in my homeroom—not with the way he took a desk one row directly behind me, and not with the way I could feel his demon eyes burning into the back of my neck. And for the pièce de résistance. He’s in every single class I’m in. Every single damn one!

  The demon Devin is thin with a mostly snake-like body, and he’s a few inches taller than me. He has the same ugly-as-hell features as every other demon I’ve come across. Horns, yellow eyes, flaming blood-red skin, slathering pit bull-like jaw, talon-like claws. In his case it looked almost comical, given the extremely preppy clothes he was dressed in—Polo shirt, a white sweater tied around his neck, slacks, and oxford shoes. I didn’t bring my iPhone to school with me, so I couldn’t figure out his human appearance, but from the way I caught some of the girls looking him over, I knew he appeared to be good-looking.

  This demon has been sent to keep watch over me. And of course, to test me. How can I possibly go to school every day and not only have to see him, but have him sitting so close to me that I can smell that noxious sweet sulfur odor that comes off of all demons? And knowing that those damn yellow demon eyes are on me constantly? How could anyone possibly do that without going insane? But I don’t have a choice—if I switched high schools to Newton South, or even just some of my classes, the demons would know. But if I cracked under the demon Devin’s watch, they’d know that, too. I was being put in an impossible situation, yet somehow I kept my composure while I was in Devin’s presence, acting as if he was only some preppy kid that I didn’t give a shit about. But how long would I be able to keep it up, especially knowing that one slip-up and I was as good as dead?