The Good Demon Read online

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Cajoleas, Jimmy, author.

  Title: The good demon / by Jimmy Cajoleas.

  Description: New York: Amulet Books, 2018. | Summary: Clare, miserable since an exorcism took away the demon that was like a sister to her, discovers the occult roots of her small Southern town and must question the fine lines between good and evil, love and hate, and religion and free will.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018001104 | ISBN 9781419731273 (hardcover with jacket) | eISBN 9781683353959 Subjects: | CYAC: Demonology—Fiction. | Exorcism—Fiction. | Occultism—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.C265 Go 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Text copyright © 2018 Jimmy Cajoleas

  Jacket art copyright © 2018 Jaya Miceli

  Interior illustrations © 2018 Michael Hoeweler

  Jacket and book design by Alyssa Nassner

  Jacket copyright © Amulet books

  Published in 2018 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

  Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact [email protected] or the address below.

  Amulet Books® is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

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  FOR MARY MARGE

  Late one night she whispered me awake.

  This was long before they came for Her—before Reverend Sanders and his boy pinned me down and prayed the words over me and ripped Her straight from my soul. It was during the best years, back when I was thirteen and it was just me and Her always, and I thought it always would be.

  Get up, Clare. Hurry.

  She was just a voice inside my voice, a body inside my body, a spirit inside my spirit, my demon. When She spoke I heard Her in my blood, and when She moved I felt Her in my bones.

  It was deep into the night, a big moon bright and high shining a soft white glow through my window. I was groggy, exhausted, and all I wanted was to go back to bed.

  “But I’m tired,” I said.

  Come on, She said. You don’t want to miss this.

  “What is it?”

  But She wouldn’t tell me. I felt Her hum and purr in my chest like a kitten, I felt the warm light of Her inside me. I was awake now. I tossed off the covers and threw on a dress and snuck down the stairs, my bare feet soft on the hardwood, stepping lightly so the old house wouldn’t groan too loud and give me away. I eased open the door and closed it with the quietest click possible. I was about to turn and step into the night when She stopped me.

  Now shut your eyes.

  “What?”

  Just do it. Shut your eyes.

  “But how will I know where to go?”

  You have to trust me.

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes and stepped blindly onto the wet grass.

  Hurry, hurry, She said, and I felt a tug on my hand. She was yanking me along, running with me, dodging me between trees, whispering at me to duck under branches. I knew where we were going now, a secret spot in the woods, the place we had first come to know each other.

  I ran and ran and began to laugh, and She laughed too—I could feel Her cackling in my chest, wild and joyful in the night, just the two of us alone, the moonlight warm and wet on my back.

  Stop.

  I was out of breath, panting, my ears filled with the rush and whir of cicadas, the howling of the tree frogs, the invisible screech of the bats in the trees. How lovely and loud, the spring nights in the South.

  Open your eyes.

  Above me glittered the billion-starred sky, vast and open and clear, the hazy Milky Way, the hidden creatures of the constellations reigning over the night. And streaking all across it in burning slashes fell the stars. It was a meteor shower, fire gashing the sky, dust from a thousand distant planets touching our air for the first time and exploding, the sky bursting its seams to let all the hidden light spill out. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

  You see them?

  “Yes,” I said, “yes.”

  Those are my cousins, She said. Those are my brothers and sisters, my whole family. Watch them fall to earth. Watch them come and gather.

  “Are they really your sisters?”

  Not like you mean it, silly. But they are, still. They’re every bit as old as me.

  We danced that night in the clearing out in the woods behind my house, the burned-down shack nearby, the sky sparking bright and wild above us. We spun and twirled and howled out to the moon, to falling stars, to the glister that I prayed rained down on me in a holy fiery baptism, on me and Her, bound together in the night, and I knew nothing could ever separate us, nothing could ever tear us apart.

  I was wrong.

  I sat on the front porch swing, chain-smoking Parliament Lights, trying to read a book. I wasn’t supposed to smoke anymore, but what else could my mom and stepdad do to me? I was already grounded from everything imaginable, and now She was gone. There was nothing left for them to take away.

  It had been one month since they cast Her out of me. It wasn’t an “exorcism,” because that’s what Catholics do, and the reverend and his son weren’t any Catholics. They were Charismatics, so they called it a “deliverance.” They said they came to deliver me from evil. What they did was bust down my door and steal Her away from me. They “rebuked” Her—that was the reverend’s word—to keep Her from coming back to me again. Since then it had been one miserable month of crawling through the days, weeping myself to sleep, yanking upright in the night to scream and holler. One month of being so unbearably alone.

  I was trying to read my favorite book, this biography of John Dee that I’d bought at Uncle Mike’s Used and Collectible when I was just a kid. It was an old book, written in a super-flowery style with big words that swirled all over the page and fascinated me when I was little, words that I never heard anyone use in real life and never would. But John Dee wasn’t cutting it today. Nothing could. My dog, Eyeball, came running up and licked my bare feet, and even that sent me shaking.

  I missed Her, was all. I missed my best friend. Closer than that. She was my Only. That’s what we called each other, our most secret name, ever since I was a little girl. My Only. Every time She called me that I felt a glow in my chest and I knew that I was not alone in the world.

  But now I knew I would never feel that glow again.

  It was like the way my dad used to talk about withdrawals, when he was coming down. He said it was like being on the edge of things, a hunger growling deep in his bones. That in his heart he felt like something was missing from him, something necessary and essential, and he would fight and claw and murder to get it back. It shook him with pain, it sucked all the water out of his mouth, it left him hacking and screaming and begging for it. That’s how it felt to be without Her. Like this long dark hallway had opened inside me that went on forever, black and empty.

  My hands started to tremble, and I dropped my cigarette in my lap. It left a small burn mark on my jeans. That was okay because they were ripped all over anyhow, a little too ti
ght, but still my favorite pair. I wore my big black Dead Moon shirt too, the most comfortable shirt I’d ever owned, and I still felt shaky, awkward, like my skin was trying to crawl right off my body.

  I was about to say fuck it, to break down and start cussing the sun just for shining down on me, when I saw a boy come walking a bike up my driveway. Not a boy, a teenager, someone maybe my age. He was wearing khakis and a polo shirt and he looked terrified.

  “Can I help you?” I said.

  He just stood there and stared at me.

  “Hello?” I said. “Why do you have a bike? Are you selling magazine subscriptions or something?”

  That seemed to snap him out of it.

  “No,” he said. “I’m Roy. I’m from the other day. Last month, I mean. You know, when . . .”

  He waved his hand a little and trailed off.

  Holy shit. This was the reverend’s son, the kid who helped him take Her away from me. I didn’t recognize him without the suit, without all the authority his dad commanded. The nerve he had, showing up here.

  “Is this, like, a courtesy visit or something?” I said.

  “No,” he said.

  He dropped his bike to the ground and walked toward the porch, hesitating at the steps, then climbing them anyway. He stood just a few feet away from me, gawking. Like I said, the nerve of this kid.

  “You’re Clarabella, right?” he said, and stuck his hand out stiffly, like he wanted me to shake it.

  I didn’t.

  “Nobody calls me that except my mom,” I said. “It sounds so spinstery. I go by Clare.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Can I call you Clarabella anyway?”

  “No,” I said.

  “It’s a real nice day out.”

  “Sort of,” I said. “Too hot.”

  “I passed a turkey vulture on the way up here. It had a frog in its mouth. A big one. You could see its legs hanging out and everything.”

  I squinted my eyes and stared at him. He seemed like one of those homeschooled kids who had never been let out of church for more than an hour, the kind who had no friends and couldn’t talk about anything except Jesus and the weather. He was probably the most naïve person on earth, you could tell just by looking at him. It was almost endearing.

  Almost.

  “What are you reading?”

  “It’s a biography of John Dee,” I said. “He’s maybe my favorite person in all of history.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “John Dee was an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, and probably the most famous sorcerer in the whole world.”

  “Doesn’t that mean he was, you know, a bad guy?”

  It took everything in me not to fall out cackling. But I held it in. I lit a cigarette and sucked it in real slow. He watched me in a kind of awe, like he couldn’t believe I was just out here smoking cigarettes, like it was some sort of felony.

  I decided to fuck with him a little.

  “Well, maybe he was bad,” I said. “It depends on who you’re asking. He got accused of trying to murder Queen Elizabeth with black magic, so they chucked him in jail. Other people say he was a genius inventor and mathematician, and he transcribed the entire language of the angels. What do you think of that?”

  I smiled at him.

  “You have green eyes,” he said.

  “I’m going to get my stepdad,” I said.

  “No!” he said. “I mean, you don’t have to do that.”

  I got off the swing and walked past him across the porch and to the screen door.

  “It’s fine. He’s in the back so it’ll take just a minute.”

  “No, wait,” he said. “Please.”

  I turned to look at him. The sun lit up my face and I held a palm above my eyes, to shield them.

  “Why did you come here?” I said. “What is it exactly that you want?”

  We passed a second of silence like that, with me staring down at him and him looking awkward, searching for words.

  “Just, you know.” He put his hands in his pockets and pulled them back out. “To make sure you were okay. That all was well. And stuff. After the thing we did. My dad did. You know.”

  I could have killed him. I could have ripped his throat right out of his body.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “And my stepdad will want to talk to you. He’s the one who called you guys in the first place.”

  I pushed the screen door open and turned to walk into the house.

  “What was it like?” he blurted.

  I froze.

  “Pardon me?”

  “What did it feel like?” he said. “You know, to have a demon in you.”

  No one had ever asked me that before. Not my mom or stepdad, not a single other person. No one had ever asked me my own opinion about it. No one had ever cared to.

  I stepped back onto the porch and shut the door behind me. I leaned in close to him, so close he could have touched me, he could have put his face to mine if he wanted. His eyes stared right into my own, like he was searching for something in me, as if there was some trace of Her still left inside. I reached my hand out, just lightly, and grazed my fingertips over his forearm.

  “It’s like you’re wearing new skin,” I said. “Like a soft thing is petting you all the time.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  “I don’t think you do,” I said.

  Footsteps sounded inside the house and I jerked my hand back.

  “Clare?” an angry voice shouted. “Where the hell are you?”

  “It’s Larry, my stepdad,” I said. “You better go. If he catches you out here, he’ll probably shoot you, I don’t care who your dad is.”

  Roy scrambled down the porch steps and to his bike. I walked inside, letting the screen door slap shut behind me.

  Larry cussed me out for smoking, said he would lock me up in my room if that’s what it took.

  “Fine,” I said, “just so long as you fix my door.”

  I wasn’t kidding when I said Reverend Sanders knocked it down. He kicked it so hard he ripped the hinges off the frame, sent shards of wood flying everywhere.

  “Oh, I’ll fix it up just fine,” he said. “I’ll bar it with iron. I’ll throw you in a jail cell if I have to.”

  “Good to know you’re always looking out for me, Larry.”

  “I don’t do it for you,” he said. “It’s for your mother. She’s been through enough already without having to deal with your shit.”

  Well, nothing shuts you up quite like the truth. I walked upstairs in silence.

  I know it sounds crazy, to miss your demon. To miss being possessed by a demon, to miss losing yourself in the silky blackness that was another person swimming around inside of you. Truth was, I hated using the word “demon” for Her. It conjured up these images of ravaging fanged beasts with black eyes demanding human sacrifices, spinning people’s heads around, gashing them into torment. That wasn’t right, not one bit.

  But what were the alternatives? “Spirit” seemed like a good one, but it just didn’t fit. A spirit implied something cold, distant, and wispy, like a patch of fog with a face on it floating around ghostly in the night. And She was nothing like that. No, She was warm, soft. Not that I could touch Her, because She didn’t have a body—at least, not that I could see. But soft and warm in the way that She touched me, deep inside, Her soothing fingers, Her scratchy little girl’s voice. When She was close to me I didn’t feel cold or haunted, I felt like it was summer and I was off somewhere quiet, my body spread out in the wet green grass, the sun beating down on me. She made the world dance, She made it sparkle and whirl. That’s what it was like having Her inside of me.

  She didn’t mind the word “demon,” though. In fact, She used it all the time.

  “Ugh, but why?” I would say.

  The problem isn’t the word, She said. The problem is what the word means to you.

  I never did understand what She meant by that. And now, I guessed, I never would.

  At
least I still had my room, even if Reverend Sanders and his boy had spoiled it by coming in here hollering, laying hands and praying over me. And my poor mirror, smashed. Mom had cleaned up most of the glass from my floor, but I kept getting little splinters stuck in my feet. Otherwise my room was pretty much intact.

  I loved my room. I loved everything about it.

  My closet, vast enough for my clothes and for me to sneak in and hide. My pink-and-black curtains: they made no sense but they billowed so well. The arrowheads, the stones, the dried flowers She used to pick for me, all our treasures on the windowsill. The collages I made with Her, the images snipped from magazines and rearranged into weird alien landscapes, places that didn’t exist in this world. I never could do it, I didn’t have the right brain, but She was a genius at it. She could make everything into a fairy tale, into a story. All you need, She used to say, is a princess and a mystery. That’s every story there ever was.

  Above the bed hung my Lady Snowblood poster, this old Japanese movie about a woman raised to get revenge, to be a warrior. It was maybe my favorite movie. I liked all that snow—something you never see around here—but mostly I liked how this wild woman roamed the earth seeking vengeance for crimes that weren’t even committed against her. That everyone underestimates her and she just hacks her way straight through them all. I liked how pretty the movie blood was, how it splurted out in geysers from the spots where arms and legs used to be, how it shot ten feet up in the air and was beautiful and not realistic at all.

  It was hard being in my room, everything a memory of my life with Her. Gone now, stolen from me by that boy and his father. I lay on my bed and watched the sun go down, and when the moon came up I began to cry, and that’s how I spent the rest of the night.

  The next day was unbearably hot. I lay in bed with the air conditioner on and sweated anyway. I couldn’t believe I had to wake to another miserable day without Her.

  I tried to draw strength from Lady Snowblood and all the knickknacks and secrets of my room. It took all the power they could give me just to sit up, to slip some clothes on and try to face the day. Mornings were the worst. There was the whole lonely day stretching ahead of me like some endless lonesome highway. At least at night I knew soon I would fall asleep and maybe dream about Her.