Every House Is Haunted (32 page)

He opened the package while he punched in a phone number he had written down on a bar napkin. Inside was a DVD. He vaguely recognized the title; probably a flick featuring one of his actors. He checked the cast list on the back of the box, but didn’t recognize any names. He looked at the cover, which said this particular DVD was a “Special Limited Collector’s Edition.” That meant it had all kinds of bonus features, like behind-the-scenes documentaries, audio commentary tracks, deleted scenes. Stuff he never bothered watching.

The phone number was out of service. Bart swore and slammed down the receiver. He dropped the DVD in the wastebasket next to his desk and went to put on a pot of coffee. He thought about calling his mother.

“Dad, I need a demon.”

John Smith put down his copy of
The Paranormal Times
and looked at his son: twelve years old but small for his age; soft blue eyes magnified by outsized horn-rimmed glasses; thin, almost feminine lips, carefully neutral, nothing like the petulant frown Lizzie used when she wanted something.

“A demon? Whatever for?”

“The school’s putting on a talent show for pets. Demons, bogeys, familiars—as long as they’re not classified as dangerous with the Registry, anything can be entered.”

John folded his paper, crossed his left leg over the right, and steepled his fingers thoughtfully under his chin. “Well, a talent show certainly sounds like fun, and while I’ve encouraged you to take an interest in the Academy’s extracurricular activities, I’m not sure owning a demon is a good idea.”

“Why’s that, Dad?”

John smiled inwardly. Ever the judicious debater was his son. “Owning a pet is a big responsibility,” he explained. “And a demon! Your mother would throw a fit!”

“I’ll feed it and take care of it,” Tad said. He removed his glasses and calmly wiped them on the hem of his dress shirt. “I’ll keep it outside. You and Mom won’t even know it’s there.”

The Demonology Department at Blackloch Academy looked more like an aisle in a library than an office. The walls were top-to-bottom bookshelves, the lighting was virtually nonexistent, and the air was so still that to the casual observer the room seemed to exist in a total vacuum. The only furnishings were a small roll-top desk and a straight-backed chair, over which a Blackloch Owls varsity jacket was draped.

When Tad entered, Professor Dandridge was standing in the middle of the room with his hands behind his back, almost as if he were expecting him. He was certainly an odd man, both in looks and demeanour. One of those unfortunate people who was both very tall and very skinny, with rails for arms and stilts for legs, his head seemed to float in a nimbus of silver hair that some students opined made him look like a mad scientist. According to the Blackloch rumour network, that hair had been fire-engine red until Dandridge spent a night in the Ivy-Lesper mansion in Lotusville. And that was just one of the many stories floating around about Blackloch’s demonology professor. Another said that Dandridge got his suits at the local mortuary . . . with a spade and shovel. Tad didn’t think that particular yarn was true, despite the Demonology prof’s admittedly fresh-from-the-grave wardrobe.

“Young Tad Smith!” Dandridge beamed. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Hi, Professor,” Tad unslung his backpack and took out a hardcover book with a frayed binding. “I came to return your book.”

“Capital!” Dandridge’s hands emerged from behind his back and came together in a hollow clap. “
Sea Serpentry and the Bermuda Triangle
.”

“I liked it,” Tad said, handing it over. “Dr. Cody has some interesting theories on migratory habits. Was he ever able to prove any of them?”

“He tried,” Dandridge said with a dark grin. “Oh, how he tried! He used to teach here, you know. Advanced Biology, aquatic species, of course. He went on sabbatical—oh, it must have been three or four years back—to the Fuqua Islands.”

“In the North Pacific?”

“Yes, that’s right. He was about to start a year-long study of the Marianas Trench.” Dandridge patted the book with one of his long, cadaverous hands. “He believed there was a portal located at the bottom. If true, it would’ve gone a long way to proving a lot of the theories in this book.”

Tad gave this what he hoped was a respectful amount of consideration. Then he said, “Professor, I was wondering if I could borrow another book?”

“Oh? Did you have one in mind?”

“
Demons, Deities, and Demi-Gods
.” He coughed into his hand. “The advanced edition.”

Dandridge folded his arms and leaned against one of the book-lined walls. “That’s a serious book,” he said evenly. “Would this have anything to do with the school’s talent contest?”

Tad looked down at his shoes.

“I thought so. Well, I don’t see the harm in lending you that particular volume. It’s not as if it were part of the Restricted Collection. But I don’t think I need to tell you that demons classified as ‘dangerous to humans’ are strictly verboten in the talent show. And only a handful of Portentas are—”

“I know, sir. And yes, I was planning to enter the contest. I just . . . I wanted . . .” He frowned. “. . . I didn’t want to use something out of the primer, sir. That’s what everyone else will be doing. I wanted to be different.”

“You wanted an edge.” Dandridge’s colourless lips spread in a vulpine smile.

“Yes,” Tad admitted, “I wanted an edge.”

“I would never keep a pupil from learning—” As he spoke he turned to the shelf he had been leaning against and selected a volume bound in dark red leather. “—especially one as bright as you, Smith. And as I said before, I can’t prohibit you from borrowing it. But I will remind you to stay within the rules of the contest—”

“I will, sir.”

He held the book out to Tad.

“—and don’t even contemplate purchasing anything dangerous—”

“I won’t, sir.”

Tad took the book.

“—and above all else, be sure to have an adult present.”

By the following evening Tad had gone through the book six times and kept coming back to the same entry—
Cordovian Tattletail
. The book described it as a mimic that takes on the characteristics of whatever it eats. Tad didn’t know exactly what that meant; like many of the books about demons he had read, vague descriptions seemed to be the rule rather than the exception. But he figured that as long as he kept its diet simple, then there shouldn’t be any possibility of a gruesome bloodbath.

There was only one place that he could purchase a demon locally. The Mall, as it was called in most circles, was a pocket portal not unlike the one Dr. Cody theorized was at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Quite literally a tear in the dimensional fabric of reality, which in this instance also happened to be the most popular hub of commerce in magic artefacts in the Tri-State area. Tad had been there with his family a few times. One of those trips had been to Heads and Tails, a pet shop that specialized in rare demons. They had gone for Lizzie’s birthday, and she had picked out a sinister-looking fish, called a Striped Shadow, which had lived for about one week. (At the toilet-side service, Tad pontificated aloud on the health and safety of Lizzie’s kids, should she have any one day, and was summarily sent to bed without his dinner.)

Tad was confident he would be a better pet-owner than his sister. And because the talent contest was being sponsored by the Blackloch Academy, he was able to convince his mother and father to foot the bill for the Tattletail in the interest of his budding education. “But you know the rules,” his father said from behind his newspaper. “If it turns out to crave human flesh, you have to banish it.” Tad agreed. But as long as he kept the Tattletail on the vegetarian diet he had planned out, it wouldn’t be a problem.

No problem at all.

“It smells,” was John Smith’s first and only comment on the matter of Tad’s Cordovian Tattletail. And, to be fair, there wasn’t much more that could be said. In comparison to some of the other entries in
Demons, Deities, and Demi-Gods
, the Cordovian Tattletail was no great shakes—at least not in the looks department.

It was the size of a large puppy, with smooth, grey skin and a long slim body. Its eyes were the colour of dull rubies and stared out from beneath a thick precipice of brow. One moment it appeared to be scared; the next it seemed decisive, thoughtful. It was a Lesser Demon and a Portenta, the latter meaning it could turn into something more than the former. If given the proper motivation.

Tad named it Dennis. Not because it looked like a Dennis or because he thought Dennis was a particularly good name. Dennis was merely the first one that came to mind. That was how Tad’s thinking worked most of the time. On those very few occasions when his projects resulted in failure—like the time he brought the futon to life and it went through the big picture window in the living room, never to be seen again—he invariably gave his father the same answer:
It seemed like a good idea at the time
. Tad was not aware that these seemingly random decisions were in actuality communiqués from his subconscious, and that his decision to purchase a Cordovian Tattletail and name it Dennis came from the same place as the decision to enter the talent contest in the first place. Nor would he have cared. If Dennis turned out to be a Great Old One, one of the unspeakable deities that could destroy entire galaxies by blinking, and inadvertently brought about armageddon, Tad would have offered up the same explanation.

It seemed like a good idea at the time
.

He took Dennis out to his mother’s greenhouse. The vegetarian diet was to begin today, but first he needed to pick up a few groceries. As he escorted Dennis to a huddle of potted ferns, he made a mental note to secret the veggies off his dinner plate. Waste not, want not.

A week later, Dennis had doubled in size. He was now as big as a Shetland pony and as green as the Incredible Hulk. He had eaten five ficus trees which were Betty Smith’s pride and joy, and Tad had been forced to relocate Dennis to a chained post behind the woodshed. He mowed the lawn twice that weekend and fed Dennis the clippings. The demon grew and grew.