The Good Demon Read online

  Yeah, but what about Kevin Henrikson? Was Luther Simpkins the “loathsome company” that Gaspar said Kevin had fallen in with? And if he ran away, where was he hiding all those years? Where did Cléa and Miss Mathis fall in with all this?

  There were too many questions for my brain to deal with tonight. I was glad I remembered the videos from the library. Roy couldn’t talk when he was on trips with his dad, and I was really starting to miss his voice over the phone. I had to wait until Mom and Larry went to bed and then watch a movie with the volume way down so as not to wake them up. At least movies would be a distraction.

  The movie I watched was called The Sentinel. It was pretty great. It was about this crazy blind man that stood watch over the gates of Hell, which were really a door in some dumb New York apartment building. The best part of the movie was when the door opened up and all the creepy souls long locked up came crawling out. The main character running around screaming, wondering how her boring old apartment building could be the gateway to the underworld.

  I don’t know, it made sense to me. I was pretty sure you could find Hell just about anywhere.

  All that night I had nightmares.

  I dreamed She was lost, wandering the woods around the Wish House. Grasping white hands clawed at Her voice, some ghostly wall barring Her from me.

  I dreamed Her as a little girl in a pink dress, lost and alone in a great forest. I saw Her with eyes black and terrified, calling out for me. The trees became brown-hooded monks with long wooden crosses hung upside down from their chests. They staggered toward Her, surrounding Her under the bright white moonlight, the stars glimmering blackly. The monks were singing an old song, not in English, some garbled wail from long before time.

  I watched Her cover Her face. I watched Her scream and cower and moan. I realized it wasn’t Her who I was seeing anymore, it was me. I was Her, and the hooded figures were closing in. One of them grasped me by my wrist. He pulled me up to the darkness of his face and let his hood fall.

  I woke myself screaming.

  My mom was standing just inside my door.

  “Well, good morning to you, too,” she said.

  “I had a nightmare.”

  “No kidding. I was just coming to tell you breakfast is ready.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  Mom stopped at my door. I knew she wanted to say something to me, something important, the words perfect as magic to stitch up all the ripped places between us, to fix everything. But then she just sighed.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t watch so many scary movies,” she said.

  “I’ll try not to.”

  Mom smiled and shut my door. She’d be leaving for work any minute.

  I felt a little sick, like I was coming down with the flu or something. The Wish House spirit hovered over me, watching. I was getting tired of its presence, tired of having eyes on me all the time. I wanted to pull the covers over my head and lie back down and doze my way until tomorrow, when Gaspar would name his boon. But I couldn’t do that. I know it’s weird, but I felt like I owed it to Kevin. He was the only person I ever knew of who was anything like me. I felt like he was my friend or something, like he and I could be the same person. It was amazing what that little notebook could do.

  My next stop was Luther Simpkins’s house.

  The Simpkinses’ house sat lonely and high-gated, the oak trees surrounding it shrouded in Spanish moss. You could only just barely see the house, the attic poking through the treetops. Hopping the fence didn’t seem like such a good idea, so I rang the buzzer.

  “Yes?” said a woman’s voice.

  “I need to talk to Luther Simpkins, please,” I said.

  “Oh,” said the voice. “I thought you were the delivery boy. Poppy doesn’t see visitors anymore. You’ll have to find another source for your school newspaper.”

  “I’m not writing for the paper,” I said. “Besides, it’s summer. There’s no school.”

  “Be that as it may, Poppy does not receive visitors. I suggest you trouble us no further.”

  “Please,” I said. “It’s real important.”

  “Go away.”

  “It’s about the Paradise Society.”

  There was a silence on the intercom. I felt the Wish House spirit leaning in close, as if in anticipation of what would happen next. I put my ear to the speaker. I could hear the woman breathing on the other end, slow and steady, as if she were trying to make a decision.

  The intercom shut off and a buzzer sounded. The gates swung themselves open.

  I walked down the tree-lined brick path to the Simpkinses’ house, three stately stories glaring down at me through the trees and moss. But the spirit didn’t follow me. I could feel its presence hang back a bit, like it was scared to walk onto the Simpkinses’ property. That didn’t make me feel any better. But I had come so far, and I wasn’t going to stop now. I climbed the steps to the front porch and knocked on the bright-red double doors.

  A woman answered, maybe fifty years old, with a blue wrap on her head. She wore a leopard-print dress with black high heels. I thought she was pretty. I’d never seen anybody wear anything like that, much less in the middle of the day. All the curtains were drawn in the house and it was very dark inside.

  The woman smiled at me. Her lips were bright pink, and she smelled like perfume and cigarettes.

  “Come in, I suppose,” she said.

  The house was grand, big mirrors everywhere, so clean there was no way anybody here had kids. All the counters had sharp edges, and the tabletops were made of stone. It didn’t seem so much a house you lived in as a place where you showed off all the cool stuff you bought. Giant vases stood like funeral urns all over the place. The rugs on the floor seemed ancient, woven with strange village scenes: a woman plucking a chicken, animals hung up bleeding by their hooves. A painting of a naked lady smoking a cigar hung over the mantel, her face fat and drunk and happy. Two scary-faced masks grinned at me from the wall. One had big red cheeks and a massive tongue lolling out of its mouth. The other was slim, ghostly, like something that would sneak up on you at night.

  The woman led me to the living room. It was dark, with red velvet curtains draped over the windows, blocking the light. A bunch of folks sat around a small wooden table, chatting and laughing. Some were young, some were old, but they were all dressed fancy, they had nice shoes, they looked like lords and ladies out of a show about England. I felt pretty shabby in just my jeans and hoodie. One woman with three rings on her finger held a large golden cup. On the wooden table burned a fat purple candle next to what looked like a cat’s skull. The air was thick with incense and something chemical, like sulfur.

  “This girl came to talk to Poppy,” the lady said.

  The men and women looked back and forth at each other, as if sharing a secret. A blond man in little round glasses smirked at me.

  “I told her that no one speaks to Poppy, but she insisted.” The lady took my hand. Hers was gloved, soft. “She said she must speak to him about the Paradise Society.”

  At this the room went silent. The blond man stopped his smirking, and I saw the teacup tremble in his hands.

  “What is your name, young lady?” said the woman.

  “Clare. And you’re Luther Simpkins’s daughter.”

  “Millicent, yes. How very perceptive of you.”

  “Millicent, darling,” said the blond-haired man, “what on earth did you tell her?”

  “Nothing yet,” she said. “But what would I tell her except for the truth? That we are merely a group of concerned citizens who gather to discuss the rejuvenation of our fair town. It was once the jewel of the state, was it not? A rather tiny jewel, but all the more precious for that. Though the shimmer has quite fallen off it these days, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” said a grey-headed woman. “It most certainly has.”

  “And we,” said Millicent, gesturing around the room, “have taken it upon ourselves to start a sort of grassroots campaign, do you see?
To make our town what it once was, back when my father was in charge. Before others of a decidedly inferior quality usurped it from him.”

  “Where is Luther Simpkins?” I said. “Is he here?”

  “Of course he is, child!” said Millicent. “Where else would he be?”

  “But, Millicent . . .” said the blond-haired man.

  “And I believe,” she said, “that Poppy would be most delighted to speak to this girl about the Paradise Society. Don’t you agree?”

  “Yes,” the blond-haired man said, smirking. “I do believe he would.”

  “I’m not sure if I ought to,” I said.

  “Oh, hush now, darling, you’ve already disturbed our little gathering here, thrown the ambiance off, and I doubt we shall ever recover. Poppy’s right this way, just up this staircase—yes, here you go.”

  Millicent ushered me along toward the back of the house. She shooed me past a baby grand piano, past portraits and snapshots, some looking as old as the Civil War. In all the newer ones stood a suited and grinning man, Luther Simpkins himself, always surrounded by people. Luther Simpkins giving a speech. Luther Simpkins shaking hands with a mustached man. Luther Simpkins with his arm around a striking girl in a red dress, probably Millicent when she was about my age. I wondered what it was like to grow up so rich. To be proud of who you are and where you came from. I loved Mom, but she was a wreck, and don’t even get me started on Dad. We had never been family-photo material.

  “My family was quite happy back then, weren’t we?” said Millicent. “Mommy took the loveliest photos of us. Yes, we were so very happy.”

  We reached the landing on the second story. Another staircase continued, much narrower, up to the third floor. Millicent herded me up it, following close behind me. The top of the staircase ended in a small enclave with a shut door at the end. Millicent reached around me with a key in her hand and unlocked the door.

  “Poppy likes his privacy,” she said.

  “Well, maybe I should leave, then.”

  “No, no. I assure you, he’ll find you very interesting. He’s right this way, come along.”

  Millicent shoved me through the doorway and into a pitch-dark room.

  “Poppy?” she said. “Poppy, dear, you have a visitor.”

  Something lurched in the darkness.

  I turned to run but Millicent slammed the door shut in my face. I heard the lock turn.

  “Let me out!” I said.

  I heard laughing from the other side.

  I kicked the door as hard as I could. I banged on it and screamed. I was trapped in here, and I wasn’t alone. The floor-boards creaked. I whirled around but I couldn’t see anything. My back against the doorframe, I pulled out my flip phone and shone its tinny screen light around the room. It was sparsely furnished, just a chair and a table on which sat an empty plate, a cup turned on its side. The walls were blank except for thick curtains that hung over what must have been windows.

  I shone the light to my left and froze. Someone was standing in the far corner of the room. A man, naked, with his back to me, facing the wall. He shivered. I could hear the panting of his breath.

  “Mr. Simpkins?” I said.

  Slowly he turned toward me. Most of his body was hidden in the shadows, but I could see his face. It was Luther Simpkins alright, the man from all the billboards, or at least some version of him. His head was tilted to the side and his eyes shone a pure white in the cell phone light. His mouth was open wide in a painful smile, all gums and teeth. Tears ran down his cheeks. He stepped forward and I shone my phone light down his body.

  Claw marks streaked across his chest, the skin curled and ribboned around the gashes. Blood dripped down his legs and onto the floor.

  I fumbled at the door, trying to pry it open, but it was locked, it wouldn’t budge.

  “They’re coming,” said Luther Simpkins, his voice ragged and maimed, like something drug down a highway, his eyes wide with awe and wonder. “They’re coming back.”

  He pinched a torn hangnail of flesh and pulled, slowly ripping a long strip of skin down his chest.

  “You’re part of it,” he rasped. “You made it happen.”

  Luther Simpkins reached his bloody finger out toward me.

  I screamed.

  The door yanked open and I fell out onto the landing. Millicent stood above me, laughing. She slammed the door and locked it with her key.

  “Poppy didn’t want our little group reuniting,” she said. “He said it was too dangerous. In his old age Poppy has become a coward.” She leered down at me. “Do you see what we do to people who oppose us? Do you see what we do to our own family?”

  I jumped to my feet and ran down the stairs. The guests were all seated, sipping their drinks, laughing at me. The candle and skull were gone, it looked now just like a gathering of old friends. Millicent followed me down the stairs.

  “You can’t stop us, darling,” she said. “You can’t stop what we’ve already begun.”

  I didn’t quit running until I had reached my mom’s car, jumped into the driver’s seat, and gunned it as far away from that house, as fast as I could get.

  I felt sick after what I’d seen at the Simpkins mansion. Luther Simpkins was obviously ill, or crazy, or something, locked up in that room in the dark by Millicent, his own fucking daughter. And who were those people with her? Was that some new version of the Paradise Society?

  I got home and took the hottest shower I could stand. I wanted to wash that place off me, to scrub every trace of it from my skin. I felt light-headed and woozy, my body shivering in the hot water. Afterward I crawled into bed, even though it was still early, even though Mom wouldn’t be home for hours.

  I hadn’t felt this bad in ages, not since I had the flu two winters ago. Even She was worried about me then. When Mom left the room She would lay her cold hand on my forehead and sing to me. She was always so good when I was sick.

  I wished it was tomorrow. I wished the spirit would name its boon and I could have Her back with me already.

  I dozed for a while, and when I woke up Mom was home. I lay under the covers and listened to her bustle around the house, hoping she wouldn’t come upstairs and try to talk to me. I didn’t feel up for too much conversation. But pretty soon I heard footsteps on the stairs. I burrowed deeper under the covers and turned my back to the door. Mom sat down on the side of my bed.

  “Hi, honey,” she said.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  I tried to make my voice sound scratchy, like I’d been asleep. Mom brushed my hair behind my ear.

  “Not feeling well?”

  “Never felt better.”

  Mom bent down and kissed my forehead. That’s how she always took my temperature.

  “Good Lord, you’re burning up,” she said.

  “I’m fine, really.”

  “No, honey, I don’t think you are. I’ll get you some Advil and a glass of orange juice, how does that sound?”

  “Can I have a ginger ale?”

  “Of course you can.”

  Mom was always sweet like that. I didn’t have anything against her, not really. She’d done her best with me, gotten cleaned up, moved our lives onward past Dad. But it still felt like there was a wall between us now, some kind of barrier that sprung up after Mom married Larry. Maybe it was Her, I don’t know. Still, I wished I could be honest with my mom. I wished I could be the kind of daughter I knew she wanted me to be.

  Mom left my room and came back with the Advil and ginger ale. I took the pills and lay back down, hoping she would leave.

  “I know things have been hard lately,” said Mom. “I've probably done everything all wrong with you, smart as you are, strong as you are. But I’m trying, Clare. I’m trying to make things good again.”

  “You can just leave him, you know?” I said. “We can pack up and go tomorrow.”

  “It isn’t as easy as that,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “It just isn’t.” Mom looked up a
t me, her eyes wet and shining.

  I wanted to sit up and throw my arms around her, to let her cry on my shoulder, to cry with her about all I’d seen at the Simpkins mansion. But I just couldn’t manage it. I never seemed to be able to cry when I really needed to. So I just pretended to be asleep. After a minute or so, Mom got up and let herself out of the room, shutting the door behind her. The Wish House spirit lingered there, in the corner, watching as always.

  “Sorry you had to see that,” I said. The spirit was silent. Slowly I fell asleep.

  I had a dream. It was a memory dream, from when I was a little girl.

  It was a pretty day, and I’d been with Her out in the woods. Mom was off at work. I came inside because it was hot out, and because I was thirsty. I just wanted a cup of water.

  And that’s when I found him.

  He was slumped back in a chair at the kitchen table. His arm was still tied, the needle lay freshly used on the table. His beautiful blue eyes were wide open. That’s what I remembered, and that’s just the way it was in the dream. His eyes were the blue of the noon sky, his gaze long gone and far off, like the ceiling had fallen away and the clouds opened up and Heaven was coming down. His jaw was slack and open. He looked mystified, amazed. My daddy was dead.

  I snapped awake. The house was silent and I was alone. Except I didn’t feel alone. I felt cold, I felt afraid, like if I closed my eyes and concentrated I would see the Wish House spirit looming over me.

  It was right there. It was right at the foot of my bed.

  Could it see what I dreamed?

  I pulled the covers up to my neck and forced myself to turn my back to it. I could feel its breath on me, the burn of it on my neck.

  I lay awake like that for the rest of the night.

  In the morning I felt worse. I hated that. Today was the day I’d dreamed of for so long, and now I was going to be sick for it. Mom came in to check on me, bringing coffee and DayQuil. I took the medicine from Mom and rolled over, hoping she would leave me alone.

  “Love you, sweetie,” she said.