The Good Demon Read online

  Miss Mathis settled back into her chair, sunglasses dark over her eyes. Her mouth twitched. When she began to speak again it was almost a whisper.

  “Jesus, I don’t know if I can tell the rest of it. But I suppose I got to. Been waiting forty years to tell someone, and wouldn’t you know it, that somebody turns out to be you. Cléa’s spitting image. You look enough like her to be her sister, you know that?”

  I remembered the picture I saw of Cléa at Uncle Mike’s. I didn’t feel as beautiful as her, not by a long shot.

  “I’m not just talking looks, honey,” said Miss Mathis, like she could read my mind. “I’m talking spirit, now. There’s something in you that reminds me of her. And, well, Cléa was a dear, wasn’t she? She was a star, like she walked into a room and we all adjusted our orbit accordingly. Cléa had power like that, a presence, a magic sparking every word she spoke.”

  I wanted to tell Miss Mathis that wasn’t how I was at all, that I’d spent the last eight years being a kind of blank space, hiding myself from people. If anyone thought I was a star it was Her, not anybody else. Well, except for Roy. Maybe he saw me that way, too.

  “I met Cléa the same way I met you,” said Miss Mathis. “That mysterious way that certain like-minded folks tend to find each other. Some people call that fate. I just call it the way things are. Like begets like, after all, and me and Cléa were a pair. Her momma had known a little spellcasting, tiny magics, and she wanted to learn some herself. Well, you can’t teach things like that, not really—they just sort of bubble up in a person, and the best thing you can do is help them bring it out in themselves. ’Course, Cléa didn’t need my help. She was a goddamn natural. I started bringing her along to Gaspar’s parties. They were getting more and more lavish. This town always had a dark element to it, an extra shadow over things, so to speak. That’s why there are so many goddamn loonies running around in such a small place. It draws us like a barbecue draws the Baptists.

  “Anyway, I liked showing up places with her. Cléa was about your age, maybe a little older, and she always wore these dresses that seemed to flutter around her, like how light reflects in water. I liked to walk into a room and have everybody turn and stare at us, compliment me on how beautiful my daughter was, which always made me feel old and got her laughing. Cléa could really make you feel like something special, she could. I miss that. All these years later, I miss her.”

  I wanted to tell Miss Mathis that I understood, that I knew what it was like to miss your person, your Only. But this wasn’t my story now, it was hers. Miss Mathis took a deep breath and kept going.

  “One night at the Wish House me and Cléa snuck off from the rest of the party. See, Cléa wanted to explore. Gaspar’s house had many rooms. It was like a museum, dark places galore where any number of mysteries might be buried. Seemed like a bad idea to me, but I was drunk, and Cléa could convince me to do just about anything. So we crept deep into Gaspar’s house, further than any of us had ever dared to.

  “We had candles, you know, nothing brighter or fancier than that, and the lights were off in all the rooms and hallways we passed through. It was spooky, and if it spooks a woman like me, then you know I’m not bullshitting. But me and Cléa were drunk and were having our time, opening doors, stealing deeper and deeper into the Wish House. Until we came to this one room, bigger than all the others. We heard a noise in the corner, a sort of snicker. Cléa grabbed my hand and we both froze, and I dropped my candlestick. We were scared, both of us knowing now we had gone too far. I heard it again—laughter, like cackling, the kind that makes you feel sick to your stomach. It was coming from the back corner of the room.

  “I wanted to leave, just turn tail and run, but Cléa wouldn’t have it. ‘Come on, Eugenia,’ she said. ‘We have to see.’ I know she was thinking that we had found the secret to Gaspar’s power, and if she found out, then maybe she could be just as powerful as him. Cléa always did have a thing for power. Hell, all of us in this walk of life do. And it’s our downfall every damn time.

  “I kept walking softly, trying to make as little noise as possible. For some reason Cléa’s candle didn’t seem to cast very much light at all, like the dark was too thick, like it was a living thing and it just kept hogging up the light. As we came closer, the snickering stopped. It turned into a sort of grumble, a murmuring to itself, not like any animal I ever heard. Soon we got close enough to see what was making that racket, and I had to slap my hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t scream.

  “It was a boy, not much older than you. He was naked, except for a pissed-on pair of shorts. His body was covered in what looked like tattoos, magic stuff, stars and symbols, the kind of equations real magicians use, like alchemy. His eyes were a deep black, and I knew he was possessed. Not just by one demon, mind you. By a whole legion of them. Power radiated out from him like a goddamn nuclear reactor. It tingled you down to your toes, believe me. We’d found the source of all Gaspar’s power, this little boy stuffed full of demons.

  “He got on his knees, the boy did. He was begging us to help him. I got scared, I tried to back away. But then he reached his hand out to Cléa. And when he did, one of the tattoos on his arm cracked a little bit, and a drop of blood spilled out. That’s when I realized that those weren’t tattoos. They were scabs. Gaspar had carved his magic into the boy’s flesh, a spell written on human skin, the kind of thing you can’t wash out.

  “I told her we got to go, and now. She said no, that this boy needed our help. Cléa pointed to a place on the boy’s stomach, a flap of skin half hanging off. On it was carved a feather, the symbol of the Paradise Society, followed by a bunch of slashes like some weird handwriting. The boy had just about clawed it off himself. Cléa said that was the part that was keeping him there, that little binding spell on his skin.

  “And before I knew it, Cléa had slipped a knife from her garter—she always came to these parties armed, a lesson maybe you should learn—and took a step toward the boy. She was whispering to him, cooing at him, singing this soft little lullaby of a song. It was working, it was her magic, she was calming him, drawing closer to him. By the time I realized what she was doing, it was too late.

  “Cléa slipped the knife over his stomach. The skin came off in one clean flap, easy as if a surgeon had done it. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I know it hurts. Let’s get you bandaged up and to a doctor.’ And the boy looked at her, and I swear to you he smiled.

  “Then he jumped at us. Smacked Cléa right in the face, a bright-red bloody fistprint on her cheek. The boy took off running. We chased after him, but he busted through a window and ran into the woods. We followed him as best we could, called out to him, walking through the woods and moonlight. A howl came up from the Wish House, a fierce sort of wail that sent shivers over me. It was Gaspar. He had figured out the boy was gone, his power was gone. I knew he’d be searching these woods, too. By then it was nearly daylight, and I figured the boy had hightailed it right out of town. Me and Cléa joined with the other guests leaving the Wish House, everyone drunk and disturbed, laughing as if we didn’t all know something important had happened, as if we didn’t all know the good times had ended.

  “Not too long later we heard the boy got run over, that he was dead. Found out his name was Kevin, that he was some kind of runaway. Cléa was all torn up about it. She thought it was her fault. ‘Hell,’ I said, ‘you sprung him loose. You saved him. It was his own fault he got run over.’ But she wasn’t content with that. You got to understand me: Cléa was good. Hell of a lot better person than me, anyway. I wanted to leave the country, book it as far away from Gaspar as I could, start my life over. Cléa, she wanted to stay, she wanted to fix it. ‘He’ll just come back if we don’t,’ she said, ‘same as he always has, through the ages. We have to end it, Eugenia. We have to destroy the Wish House.’

  “I told her hell fucking no. There was no way we were powerful enough to destroy him, much less the House. If she wanted to commit suicide, she was on her own. I will nev
er forget the look that she gave me when she left, when she walked out this very door. And then we didn’t talk again, not for months. Until one day she showed up at my doorstep. She had that rosewood box in her hand. She said, ‘Keep this, and if anything happens to me, guard it with your life.’”

  Miss Mathis wiped a long wet tear from her cheek. She lit another cigarette and took a deep drag of it, breathing it out like the dregs of a lifetime spent with worry and regret. I realized the “loathsome company” that Gaspar said Kevin had fallen into wasn’t the Paradise Society. No, it was Miss Mathis and Cléa, the ones who tried to free him.

  “I should have gone with her,” said Miss Mathis. “Cléa shouldn’t have had to do something like that alone. Maybe we could have beat Gaspar. But I didn’t go. I was a coward. Cléa walked into those woods and never came back. I was so scared Gaspar would come for me next that I didn’t even want the rosewood box in my house. So I took it over to Miklos’s and had him cuss me for an hour, did I know where his daughter was, how could I have let something happen to her? I put the box in his hands and left, and I didn’t see him again for forty years.

  “Gaspar vanished after that, too. Forty years gone, and now he’s back. You can feel it, can’t you? The change in things? The woods crying out? You can hear the birds outside weeping at night. Something big is coming, and once again I missed my chance to stop it. Always was a coward.”

  The smell of the room, the stink of cigarettes and dog piss, the sad and lonely woman crying in the chair in front of me. It was almost too much. I almost couldn’t ask the next question.

  “Miss Mathis?” I said.

  “Yeah, honey?”

  “Is that scroll over there Kevin’s skin?”

  She nodded at me.

  I got up and let myself out, shutting the door quick as I could behind me.

  At home I coasted the car, lights off, into the driveway, but I didn’t go back into my house. Instead I walked through the woods and into the starlight, to the place where I first met Her. I sat on a tree stump next to the wrecked shack, the weeds and tall grasses scratching my knees, the moon like a sad white flag waving over me.

  Hi, Clare, a voice said. Did you miss me?

  I felt Her again. The whisper of hands through my hair, the brush across my cheeks, soft as a breeze. Her warmth, the quiet glow inside me that happened whenever She was near. How good it felt to feel Her again, to not be alone anymore. How much I had missed Her, how much I loved Her, how good She could make everything all over again . . .

  But no, that wasn’t Her. Something wasn’t right about it. This warmth was a false warmth, a disguised darkness. I whirled around and faced it now, blacker than black, the night’s own shadow. The Wish House spirit had followed me here. I could make it out finally, could see where it ended and normal night began. I stared down deep into it, and felt it glaring back at me with nothing but hate.

  “Are you Nicolas?” I said, and the darkness glowered.

  Maybe this demon was just like Her. I mean like She really was, not how I wanted Her to be. Maybe She was just a lying, wicked demon who wanted nothing but what was good for Herself. Maybe She just leeched onto me and sucked up my life and wouldn’t let go.

  God, that sounded just like what drugs had done to my dad. How they kept him hidden in our house, or else banished away from us for days and days, how we couldn’t depend on him, how they controlled every move he made. How they kept him vacant and apart from us, how they put him in a place where no one, not even my mom, could reach him.

  Was that what She had done to me? Hadn’t She kept me alone all this time, cut off from other people, from kids my own age, from boys, from my own mother? Hadn’t She paraded me around the night like a puppet, seizing full control over me whenever She wanted?

  I sat down and covered my eyes with my hands, my head hot and flushed and fevery. I didn’t want to believe it. More than anything, I didn’t want it to be true.

  The way She hurt me when She was angry. The way She made miserable anyone else I loved. The way She only wanted me for Herself, how She wouldn’t dare share me with anybody else.

  And now She expected me to hand Roy over to be scarred and tortured. Why? Because of who his fucking father was?

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t give Roy to Gaspar just to get Her back. Not if Gaspar intended to make some sort of treasure chest out of Roy, a pouch for all his demons. Roy would be a slave, carved up and ruined, his mind and body destroyed. And it would be my fault. No, I couldn’t do that. No way in hell could I ever. I turned my eyes to the darkness and I stared that demon down. I took a deep breath and spoke.

  “You can’t have him,” I said.

  The darkness glared back at me.

  “You can’t have him. I won’t let you.”

  The demon seethed at me, it writhed and twisted, the blackness, the anger.

  “Leave,” I said. “And don’t come back. You are not welcome here.”

  It gnashed its teeth at me. It swallowed up moonlight and howled. The edges of things dissolved and night stretched its hand out to my face. My nose filled with the scent of burning, with sulfur and charred flesh.

  “No,” I said. “You cannot have him. I won’t let you. Now get out.”

  I stood up off the stump and stepped toward it, scared, but I wasn’t stopping. The moon burned brighter than Heaven, and all the stars flung their light. I stared the demon down right where its eyes should have been.

  “Leave!” I screamed. “Begone now and forever!”

  I heard a rasping noise, a scrape of metal on metal, the sound of worlds ripping apart. I fell to my knees, covering my ears. It was loud as the tornado that touched down by our house when I was a kid, that ripped our neighbor’s tractor off the ground and catapulted it down the street. The roar filled my ears, filled my nose and lungs. It was as if it was coming from inside me.

  Then nothing. Silence, and the normal night noises.

  I said no. I did it. I scared the Wish House spirit away.

  I had also just lost Her forever.

  I fell down on the ground and let myself cry. The quiet kind, my body shaking, the cool grass and the mosquitoes and lightning bugs swarming around me. I would miss Her always, even if She wasn’t who I thought She was. Because She had saved me. For years and years and years, She had been the only good thing in my world. I loved Her, it was true, I loved Her more than I had ever loved anyone in my life, even Mom and Dad. But She was a liar. I felt a hole open up in me, an emptiness that I knew would be with me the rest of my life.

  But I had done the right thing. There was no way I could give Roy to Gaspar, not to have him do what he did to Kevin.

  “I hate You for this,” I said. “And I’ll miss You always.”

  A wind shivered the trees, and it felt like She heard me.

  I walked back to the house and shut the door and turned to go upstairs, but there was Mom, sitting on the steps.

  “Where you been, honey?” she said.

  “Out.” No, that was too harsh. I was going to be nicer to Mom, remember? “I mean, I had to take care of some things.”

  “I know you’ve been taking the car out, sneaking away at night,” she said. “I have half a mind to tell Larry, except I’m scared of what he’d do.” Mom put her head in her hands and sighed. “I just wish you’d tell me what was going on.”

  I thought about it for a second, I really did. I nearly told my mom everything, about Her, about Roy and Miss Mathis and the One Wish Man. I almost did it right there. But who would believe something like that? She probably just would’ve thought I was crazy or lying. It was impossible to explain.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I said. “But it’s over. I won’t be sneaking out anymore.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  “Yeah, but this time I mean it,” I said. I sat down next to her and laid my head on her shoulder. “Things are going to get better now. I’m going to get better, I promise you that.”

  “We’
ll see, I guess,” said Mom, but she was smiling. “Now, go upstairs and get you some sleep.”

  Mom kissed me on the cheek and I went up to my room. I looked all around, but it was empty. There was no one there but me.

  I crawled into bed. I felt like a new Clare, like a new person with a new future, my own, finally, the world open for me to search my way through, alone. But it was a good alone, because I had chosen it. I was heartbroken, sure, but hopeful. I had my mom, and I had Roy. For the first time since I lost Her, I felt like a new life was possible for me.

  That night I slept deep and rich and full and I did not have any dreams.

  Do you know how good it felt, after a month of listless, haunted sleep, nightmares and spying demons and a great yawning emptiness, to wake up rested? To have to be woken up by your mom, because you slept through her knocking on your door for the first time in your life? Even better, to wake up to your mom smiling at you, with a plate full of pancakes with whipped cream and strawberries piled on top of them, like you haven’t been lying to her for years, like she knew it all and forgave you already, like today was the start of your brand-new, better life?

  Because I can tell you right now, it felt pretty damn amazing.

  “Saw you slept in today,” Mom said, “so I figured I’d go back to making breakfast.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  I meant it, too. I wasn’t trying to hide anything. It felt good to be honest for once, to say something and not mean anything else by it.

  “No problem. I’m glad you’re feeling better. For real, this time.”

  Again I wondered how much Mom really knew about me. Probably a lot more than I ever dreamed she did.

  I dressed and walked downstairs. Eyeball met me right at the foot of the stairs and licked my fingers. It was good to have him love me again, for him not to be afraid anymore. The whole day seemed mine, and only mine, for the first time in ages.