The Good Demon Read online

Mom hesitated a little by the doorway.

  “You know, if something’s going on,” she said. “Or maybe, if you want to talk about what happened . . .”

  “I know, Mom,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “I mean it, Clare. I’m here.”

  “I got it.”

  Mom nodded at me and left.

  I don’t know. I think I really hurt her feelings.

  •

  Once everyone was gone, the house empty, I rolled myself over. Even with the curtains drawn, my room seemed impossibly dark. I needed to get out of bed, maybe out into the sunshine, shake off whatever sickness I’d picked up.

  I straggled myself out of bed and into a pair of jeans and my dad’s old holey Bikini Kill T-shirt, for strength. I made it to the bathroom and threw up for a few minutes while the spirit watched me, probably taking notes.

  “Can’t you just name your boon already?” I said. “Please?”

  I got dizzy and puked again.

  “Well, if you’re just going to stand there,” I said, “want to hold back my hair or something?”

  I staggered over to the sink and gargled mouthwash. Somehow I made it downstairs. Mom had driven her own car to work today, so I had to take my bike. That was fine. Even though I was weak as hell, a ride would get my heart beating. It would remind me of the blood pumping in me. Soon this would all be over. I would have Her back, and I’d never be lonely again.

  I pedaled down familiar roads, through the nice, friendly neighborhoods with medium-size houses where I used to wish I lived—yards full of kids running through sprinklers, moms gardening, dads sipping beers and tossing footballs to sons in shorts. I saw a girl smoking a cigarette on the roof of her house. I waved at her, and she waved back. That made me feel a little bit better.

  Every now and again someone would look at me and squint—usually an old lady or a little kid—and I could tell they saw that something was different about me. It used to happen sometimes with Her too, especially at playgrounds and parks. I would stretch myself out on a quilt and have Her stretch out with me, both of us feeling the warmth of the sun and of each other, how happy we could be with a book and a pair of headphones.

  One time I was lying out, eyes shut, just mind-drifting, when I felt someone watching me. It was a little blond-haired girl. She had a big forehead and tiny lips.

  “Well, hi there,” I said.

  “Hello.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “I’ve seen that girl before,” she said.

  “Me? Where have you seen me before? Walmart or something?”

  “Not you. Her.”

  The little girl pointed at the spot next to me.

  “Honey, there isn’t anybody there.”

  “Yes, there is,” said the girl. “You can’t fool me. Besides, I know Her. I had a dream and She was in it. She pulled my hair.”

  And the little girl skipped off.

  The girl was sad, She said, and I made her laugh. It’s okay. It was just in her dreams.

  “You won’t leave me, will You?” I asked.

  I’ll never leave you, She promised. Not for anybody. You’re my Only.

  Oh, I missed Her. Roy helped, sure, but Roy wasn’t Her. It was different with him. I liked Roy, and he was a good distraction, but he could never be what She was, he could never understand me the way She did. She knew me deeply, into my bones, and She loved me anyway. She kept me safe. She filled up all the cold, gnawing parts of me with light. Roy couldn’t do that. Not even close.

  No one else could. Only Her.

  I started to cry a little, tears mingling with sweat, the hot ride, and my sick feeling, and I pedaled harder and let the tears fall. I was so close. So soon it would be just us two again, happy like we were. I missed Her so much my bones ached and my veins throbbed. Soon, so soon. I repeated it like a mantra.

  Maybe this was the difficult part, just a test from Gaspar. He said he sent a trying spirit, right? To test my mettle, to make sure my heart was pure? Well, I knew my heart, and my desire for Her was about as pure as it got.

  I pedaled and cried, winding my way through town. I felt the breeze blow through my hair, the cool calming winds, and tried to push the Paradise Society and Luther Simpkins and Kevin Henrikson out of my mind. As much as I felt like I owed Kevin, this battle seemed too big for me, and it wasn’t mine to fight. I focused on Her, trying to keep nothing but the feeling of Her in my mind. I focused so hard that I didn’t realize exactly where I was headed. But soon enough I turned down a familiar road, coasting down the hill toward Uncle Mike’s Used and Collectible.

  I pulled to a stop in the parking lot. I was sweaty and hot and I needed a break. At the same time, I didn’t want to go in there. I didn’t want to be reminded what I’d done to Uncle Mike, how I’d gotten myself caught up in all this Paradise Society stuff.

  But I didn’t have to go inside. Because Uncle Mike had already seen me. He came barreling out of the store, hollering.

  “You! You thief!” He shook his skinny fist at me. “I should call the police! You belong in jail!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “That belonged to my daughter!” he said. “I don’t have much of her left. You stole from her and from me.”

  I hung my head. I didn’t know what else to say.

  “It’s that woman, I know it. Eugenia Mathis, always meddling. Cléa wouldn’t be dead if it was not for her.”

  “Why?” I said. “What did she do?”

  “The bad magic. The evil my Cléa tried to destroy.”

  Just then I had a thought. It was about Miss Mathis, and about guilt, and it maybe tied Kevin Henrikson and Cléa together in my mind.

  “Uncle Mike, does the evil you’re talking about have anything to do with the Paradise Society?”

  “Yes, that is what they called themselves. Wicked, every last one of them.”

  Was Miss Mathis part of the Paradise Society? All those parties she was talking about. Was Miss Mathis evil? In giving her Cléa’s rosewood box, had I only made everything worse?

  Uncle Mike sat down hard on the outside bench. He seemed exhausted. I sat down next to him.

  “It is too much. This town is too much evil,” said Uncle Mike. “I say leave it alone. I already lost my daughter. Already that’s too much.”

  “I’m sorry about what I stole, Uncle Mike. I won’t come back again.”

  “If you did not come back, that would be the worst thing.” Uncle Mike squinted at me and smiled. “You remind me of her, my Cléa.”

  “I didn’t mean to bother you with bad memories.”

  “It’s no bother,” he said. “It’s good to be reminded. In my memories she never dies. She’s waiting for me when I dream, every night, with my wife. Dreaming is my most precious thing, for we are a family again.”

  “I’m real sorry,” I said.

  “It is okay,” he said. “But please, stay away from Eugenia Mathis. Let this alone.”

  “I will,” I said. “I wish I could take it all back.”

  Uncle Mike nodded sadly, like he understood. He rose and made the sign of the cross over me.

  “Wherever you go,” he said, “you go with God.”

  I don’t know. For some reason that made me feel a little bit better.

  I made it home and threw up. Lots. I threw up more than anything I had eaten. I retched bile into the toilet, my body emptying itself, trying to shake off whatever sickness I’d caught.

  I crawled myself to bed and lay there, panting.

  “Please,” I said to the Wish House spirit. “Will you just name your boon already?”

  But it was silent. I felt it watching.

  I pulled poor dead Kevin Henrikson’s notebook from my backpack. I thought I could use it like a talisman, something I could draw strength from. Didn’t some artists believe that their essence was actually transferred into their drawings, like somehow they stitched their souls on the page with every scratch and line? If their art e
xisted in this world, then they would always exist, too. As long as I had this notebook, Kevin Henrikson would never truly die, he would never be forgotten. That meant something to me.

  I flipped to my favorite page, a lonely hermit seated in his shack on a mountain, the moon hanging worried just outside his window. In the night sky were scrawled those strange symbols that Kevin always swirled around his figures, in the shading and shadows. I wondered if they were like cave paintings, some fucked-up picture language meant to tell a story. Maybe it was a way Kevin—or his demon—was trying to speak.

  I knew I was caught in something much larger than myself. I was just a small piece of a story that started a long time before me and that would continue long after I was gone. I didn’t want to be alone right now. I wished Roy was with me. I wished I could at least hear his voice on the phone. He was my comfort, right? The person to help me until She came back. But Roy was off preaching with his damn father, the very same person who ruined everything for me.

  So I lay back in my bed, shivering, and thought about the night Larry figured out about me, the night he decided everything was wrong enough to call up Roy’s dad and take Her away.

  It was the night Larry finally came to believe in Her.

  This is the story of the third time She took over my body. It happened one night almost two months back. It went like this:

  A knock sounded at our door.

  Mom answered. She was tired after work and she looked it. I was helping her get dinner going.

  A tall lady with blond hair stood in the doorway, two bored-looking kids at her side. They were all three relaxed and well dressed and grinning like they could have been posing on a billboard somewhere. The woman’s teeth glistened in our porch light.

  “Hi there,” said the lady. “My name is Lisa Holbrook, and this is Richard and Camille-Ellen. Say hi, kids.”

  The girl was maybe eight and she looked like the cute kid from every TV show you ever saw. The boy was older, seventeen or so. Him I knew already. We went to the same high school, not that he would have ever noticed me.

  “Hi,” said the girl.

  The boy—Richard—just waved.

  “We’ve met before,” said Mom. “At the Fourth of July cookout at the church. The last two years.”

  “That’s right!” said Mrs. Holbrook. “I knew you looked familiar. Anyway, my family is raising money for a Care Walk. You know, the kind of thing where we get donations and my whole family runs a marathon, for cancer and whatnot? Well, if you pledge a certain amount of money, that’s how much each of us get for every mile we run.”

  In seconds my stepdad Larry was in the doorway, huffing and red-faced, already two drinks in. There was no way he would miss a chance to schmooze, especially with a family as rich as the Holbrooks.

  “It’s for cancer?” said Larry.

  For one weird moment I realized Richard was staring at me. I wasn’t dressed any special way. Just my jeans, a too-big black Misfits T-shirt with a skull on it. But he was looking. I don’t know, I kind of liked it. That’s the truth. Sometimes it just feels good to get looked at. Not so much other times. But when it’s your choice, when it’s what you want—when you know for a fact that you can get it and getting it feels good to you—well, I don’t really figure anybody can blame me for that.

  I knew She never wanted me to get attention from boys. She said it was too dangerous, and I trusted Her about that. But She was quiet that day, pouty for some reason, and I ignored Her.

  “This one is actually for a new Family Life Center,” said Mrs. Holbrook. “You know, a gym for members? A basketball court for our church league.”

  “Oh,” said my mom. “Well, actually . . .”

  Larry cut in.

  “Sure thing. We’d love to help out. How much?”

  “We ask for a minimum donation of ten dollars a mile,” said Mrs. Holbrook. “Some particularly generous families have given up to a hundred.”

  I could tell Larry didn’t like that. He got all blustery and stuttered a little. Richard saw it, too. We met eyes and smirked together. It was weird connecting with a boy in that way, especially a boy like Richard Holbrook. He was tall and athletic and popular. We’d been around each other at school for years and never once had he spoken to me. That was fine, I didn’t particularly care too much, because I had Her, and because he was a notorious snob. The more invisible I was to people like him the better. But it felt good to share a laugh at my stepdad’s expense. It felt real damn good.

  “Uh, how about twenty?” said my stepdad.

  Mom looked away, embarrassed. I could tell she’d done the math, and even twenty was more than we could afford.

  “Twenty dollars would be just fine,” said Mrs. Holbrook, smiling. Great god, what a fake she was. Richard rolled his eyes. Again I had to stifle a laugh.

  “Thank y’all so much for the pledge,” she said. “The run isn’t for another month, so we’re still training, five miles a day. See y’all soon.”

  They turned to go.

  Richard Holbrook looked back at me.

  “Be seeing you,” he said.

  I’ll be honest, I blushed a little.

  I still hate myself for that.

  A couple of hours later I lay on my bed, talking to Her. She was pretty mad.

  He’s going to come and see you, you know.

  “Now why would he do that?”

  Because you’re beautiful, and you’re strange, and that’s what boys like Richard Holbrook do.

  “I doubt it.”

  You shouldn’t.

  “You’re just jealous that somebody else might pay a little attention to me.”

  You’ll be sorry.

  But Richard Holbrook did come back later that night, just like She said he would. It was a wide, clear night and the moon shone down like an old friend. Richard threw pebbles at my window.

  I opened it and told him to knock it off. I had to do the thing where I loud-whispered, like I was screaming a secret.

  “I tried to call you,” he said, “but nobody knew your number.”

  “So you threw rocks at my window?”

  “It works in the movies. Besides, what else was I supposed to do? Ring your doorbell?”

  Richard wasn’t so much to look at, really. He was too tall and he had dirty-blond hair. Freckles, too. But he had a way about him when he smiled, like he had just pulled a trick on you. I liked that.

  “So, you coming, or what?” he said.

  “Just a minute.”

  I crept out of my bedroom and down the stairs, out the front door. It was easy sneaking out of my house. I’d done it a hundred times. When I got down there Richard was leaning up against a tree, smirking at me. The moonlight made his freckles look pimply. He had a flask of something he kept drinking out of.

  “You’re not wearing any shoes,” he said.

  It was true. I’d forgotten them.

  “Maybe I just don’t have a pair I like,” I said.

  “You’re about as weird as everyone says you are,” he said, and took a big drink. “But you seem pretty smart, too.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Can I have a sip of that?”

  He handed it to me. I took a swig and gagged a little.

  “What is that?”

  “Whiskey,” he said.

  I’d never had whiskey before. Just beer and peach rum and whatever else my mom and Larry had lying around.

  “Want to go for a walk?” he said.

  I nodded sure. It was good to walk in the night, moonglow all over everything. Richard took my hand. That felt good, too. I’d never done that before either.

  We didn’t go far. Just out into the woods a little bit, to this lovely wide-armed pecan tree that I like. Pretty soon me and Richard were kissing. It was new to me, and I didn’t really want to, but I let him anyway. I guessed that’s what you were supposed to do when you’re sixteen and out walking during a big moon night. It was fun for a little while.

  But then he started
touching me, just all over the place. I didn’t want that at all. I asked him to stop.

  “Sure,” he said, but he didn’t quit. He kept going, clutching at me, rubbing his hands all over my body.

  “Quit it,” I said, and pushed him away.

  “Come on, don’t make me beg you.”

  He grabbed at me again.

  “Stop it, you creep,” I said.

  I slapped him.

  Richard laughed.

  That pissed me off. To have him laugh at my anger, to chuckle off laying a hand on me. Never had I felt smaller or more humiliated in my life.

  “Fuck you,” I said. “I’m out of here.”

  Richard laughed again. Then he pushed me.

  I tripped over a tree limb and went down hard, smacking my head on a stump. It dazed me a second. Richard crawled on top of me. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me.

  “Come on,” he said. “Just give me what I want.”

  I tried to crawl away, but Richard grabbed my shoulders and pinned me. He was a football player, I knew that. He was strong. I couldn’t move with all his awful weight on top of me.

  “Let me go,” I said. “Please.”

  I was crying.

  “You’ll love it,” he said. “Everybody says I’m good at it.”

  Richard pulled my shirt over my head. I hit him with my fists and he got mad. He palmed my face with his hand and pressed my head into the dirt. I hit him again and he punched me in the jaw.

  “Stupid bitch,” he said. “I can think of a dozen girls who would kill to be where you are now.”

  “Let me go,” I said. “Please.”

  I hated how my voice sounded, how puny and pleading and weak.

  “I’ll tell everyone,” I said. “If you don’t let me go right now I’ll tell everyone what you did.”

  Richard laughed.

  “Tell anyone you want,” he said. “But no one is going to believe you. Not that I was ever here, not that somebody like me would ever try to fuck somebody like you.”

  I hated Richard Holbrook. I hated him and I wanted him to die.

  I could feel Her roar up in me then. I could feel Her taking over me, crawling like a fire over my bones.

  “You better let me go,” I said.