“I don’t knooow,” he whined. “The only sound I can hear is the voice that tells me to dink more and tink less.”
“Get out of this body, Darwin, right now, you canine calamity.”
“Nuh-uh. Can’t. On this plane I can only talk if I possessss.”
“Remind me of that the next time you’re hounding me.”
“Carlos!” he bellowed, pitching forward with a wobble. “Yep. Tha’sss right, babyyy. Carlos.”
A shiver of dread walked along her spine, stopping at her intestines. “Tell me right now what you know about Carlos. Now, Darwin, or I’ll see to it that you never see another beef-basted pig ear again!” Oh, Christ on the crapper. What did Carlos have to do with anything? He was just a baby. An innocent child.
“I can’t tink,” he moaned.
Alarm bells shot off in her head. “Well, you’d better get to tinking, pal. Carlos is a little boy. Maybe eight or nine. If you heard something about him, I want to know what the fuck it is and I want to know now. So let’s go get coffee or something to sober your lame ass up. I need to know what you know.” She poked Darwin with a ragged nail, but he’d resumed his slump while long, choppy breaths escaped his chapped lips.
Leaning into his ear, she lifted the cap and winced, her nose wrinkling. Jesus, he was ripe. “Daaarwiiin! Wake up!”
His head snapped up, crashing into her jaw. She grabbed him by the shoulders, scanning his red-rimmed eyes. “Damn it, dog, what do you know about Carlos?”
“They want him.”
Chills coursed along the back of her neck. “Who wants him?
Who?
Why?” she yelled, her throat tight.
Darwin began to drift again, his eyelids making a slow descent, but just before he slumped into three-sheets-to-the-wind oblivion, he managed, “They know he can sssee you.”
As Darwin slumped to the left, splaying his upper body over the arm of the park bench, she jumped up, panic-stricken.
Who could possibly want Carlos that knew her? Oh, good Christ. Except for Delaney, Clyde, and Kellen, the only people who knew her were bad, bad fuckers. Why would they want a little boy? Because he had the gift of sight?
She didn’t even know how she’d been summoned by him—or where the frig he lived. One minute she’d been in Carlos’s room, the next she’d been sucked back to Kellen’s place. Damn it all. How could she possibly look after a little boy she couldn’t find? Her demonic contacts were long gone—there were only two people in the whole world who could see her, and to make everything that much worse, she was always crying these days.
As evidenced by the big fat droplets falling from her eyes, splashing to the cold, cracked pavement below.
Jesus, soon she’d have to start stuffing her bra just to keep tissues on hand.
“Hey, Carlos. How’s it goin’?” Kellen asked over his shoulder as he unpacked yet another one of his boxes.
The little boy shrugged his shoulders and gave an answer so hushed Kellen had to strain his ears to hear it. “Okay, I guess.”
“Cool. You wanna help me unpack? I have lots of science stuff in these boxes from my old school. Bet there’s a lot of stuff in there you’d be interested in,” he suggested, keeping it light. Since he’d met Mrs. Ramirez’s grandson, he couldn’t help but wonder if he was either being ultrasensitive because he’d worked with children for so long, or if Carlos really wasn’t just a quiet, introspective child, but troubled.
Uncertain as to whether Mrs. Ramirez felt comfortable enough to confide in him yet, he tried not to pry. She’d been Delaney’s long-standing part-time help, and when he’d taken over the store, he’d inherited her along with it. She brought him food, she helped him take care of the ever-growing clientele Delaney somehow had managed to develop before she’d left for Long Island, and she never questioned the odd conversations he had with what appeared to be himself.
Yet, when her eyes fell on her grandson, they grew dark with concern—which, in turn, concerned Kellen. She was a proud woman. If there was trouble with Carlos, she might not be ready to confide in him just yet.
In that moment, he realized how much he missed the routine of his classes. How much he missed his kids. How strange it was that now that he had the time to deal with the afterlife, it was eerily quiet, with the exception of Joe showing up. It meant the spirits of the afterlife felt they couldn’t trust him, and as much as the spirits drove him to want to hit a six-pack, he found he wanted to do right by them. Like Delaney had. He wanted to do it as well as she had.
Mrs. Ramirez blew past him, rubbing her hands together. “Ees—” She stopped short, correcting herself and the broken English she worked so diligently on three evenings a week at the high school. “
It is
cold in here, Meester Kellen. You turn on de heat today?” She smiled a beaming grin at him, clearly proud that her hard work was paying off.
Kellen gave her the thumbs-up sign then glanced at the digital thermostat. It read forty-two degrees. Jesus, if one more thing needed to be replaced, he was going to give D back the store and live in a cardboard box—they were warmer. Kellen frowned, rising to get a closer look. “It was just seventy about an hour ago.” He tried to reset the temperature, but it wouldn’t budge. “Damn. I’ll have to call the landlord. Mrs. Ramirez, do you know where his number is?”
She shivered, her round face pensive. “I think Meess Delaney, she leave it in de flippy thing.”
The Rolodex. He headed for the cash register, grabbing for the flippy thing, but it slid away, as though an invisible hand were trying to snatch it from him. And to think, just moments ago, he’d been pondering the afterlife peace he’d been granted.
Kellen waited a second, then grabbed for it again, capturing it just before it got away. He gave Carlos and his grandmother a hooded glance, hoping they hadn’t seen the Rolodex move of its own accord. He flipped it open, trying to remember the landlord’s last name.
The index cards began to shuffle, spinning slowly at first then gaining momentum until they began to frantically flip. Kellen threw his body at the countertop, hoping to land on it, but it zigzagged away out of his reach.
By now he should be used to this kind of madness, but it still never failed to make the hairs on his arms stand on end. “Look,” he muttered into the air, “do me a favor. Can it until the kid’s gone, okay? Whoever you are, I’ll try to help, but you’re gonna have to wait. Now quit before you scare him.”
But it was too late.
Carlos, dark eyes wide, was frozen in place by the boxes he’d been helping unpack.
Fuck.
“Carlos? It’s okay, bud. I know this is kind of weird, but I promise you, it’s okay. I’m here. Why don’t you come stand next to me?” He held out his hand, but Carlos refused to budge, though if Kellen had judged his line of vision correctly, he wasn’t even looking in the direction of the Rolodex.
Kellen followed Carlos’s eyes to the ceiling.
Holy. Shit.
His eyes opened as wide as Carlos’s. Whatever the fuck it was, it was no ghost.
Kellen looked to Mrs. Ramirez, who hadn’t batted an eyelash. She continued to dust the shelves that held bottled herb oils with the feather duster as if a slimy creature wasn’t crawling along the ceiling right above her head.
Each step he took, his clawed, webbed hands and feet dragged a gooey substance, leaving long strings of it dangling from his appendages. The creature was small, but spry. His red eyes scouting the room, spying Carlos, he paused in definite recognition. With a screech so high the bottles on the shelves rattled, he opened his mouth wide, leaving a cavernous black hole in its place. The quake of the bottles made even Mrs. Ramirez turn around.
Carlos trembled, fat tears filling the corners of his almond-shaped eyes, his thin chest rising and falling with sharp intakes of breath.
Kellen was beside him in an instant, pulling him to his side, feeling the violent shivers that rocked his slight body. Before he could speak a soothing word to Carlos, everything went dark.
“Meester Kellen. I think you better hurry and call the landlord!”
Somehow, he didn’t think the landlord was going to be able to fix what was happening now.
Streaks of lightning pinged across the room, sizzling and crackling with their appearance. In the shard of one arc of light, Kellen saw Mrs. Ramirez, now holding her purse high over her head, ready to strike their invisible attacker.
The chimes Delaney had left behind began to sway violently, their musical clattering far from soothing. They shivered with an angry, intensely fevered pitch.
Yep, it was time to make a break for it. Whatever that thing was on the ceiling, it was far too interested in Carlos for his taste. Kellen hurled Carlos up over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and made a run for Mrs. Ramirez, who swung her purse just as he made a dash for her, clocking him in the eye. “Ow! Mrs. Ramirez! Hold still. Give me your hand!” He held his free hand out to her, but as suddenly as she reached for it, she snatched her own back.
“Oh,
madre santa
!” she whispered with a terrified tremble, making the sign of the cross over her chest.
Whenever she made the sign of the cross over her chest, it meant bad shit was anticipated and she was thwarting it by calling on the big guy. Forcing himself to turn around, he fought to mentally prepare for whatever he was about to find.
But there was no preparation for what his eyes fell upon.
For as long as he lived, he’d probably never be able to tell the kids he taught there was no such thing as the boogeyman with any kind of conviction.
Oh, my, my, my. What a beast.
The demon Marcella encountered when she was dragged back to Kellen’s wasn’t winning any tiaras for drop-dead gorgeous. For sure, he wouldn’t win Miss Congeniality if his attitude were any indication.
He lingered in the far end of the room, roaring and making a godawful mess with his blasts of lightning. Using his fingers as if he were controlling a puppet on strings, he plucked the air, creating shock waves of colorful light.
He’d presented himself with a skull face, the eyes hollowed out but for the red glow that pierced the room. Long, pointed teeth protruded from his wide mouth, wiggling each time he roared. And goo dripped from his hands and feet.
Why was it that demons, when choosing their demonic overcoat, went out of their way to pick the form that drooled and had sticky shit all over its feet? It had to be a male demon. They loved the gore. Demons of the female persuasion never opted for those attributes. Scales? Yes, because they were a little scary. Horns? Sure. Horns carried an imposing threat. But for the love of all things salivating, only the male demons opted for drool.
Ick. Marcella shuddered, thankful she couldn’t touch it. That would mean she’d have to aid Kellen in knocking this motherfucker off, and if she got goo on the only damned dress she had, DEFCON 5 would have a whole new meaning for this particular demon.
And he was scaring poor Carlos—the bastard. She cocked her head in confused thought. What was Carlos doing here? Another roar from the minion kept her from pondering any further.
Something inside of her lurched like a twisting knife to her gut, making her wish now more than ever she still had her demonic powers. “Get the salt, Kellen! Get it now!”
Kellen whipped around, catching a glimpse of Marcella’s transparent form before the thundering bolts of lightning calmed and, in their place, the room began to vibrate, knocking bottles off their shelves, sending shards of prickly glass across the old, wood floor. “I don’t know where it is!” he bellowed over the thunderous rumbling.
“In the cabinet in the corner—top shelf!” she screamed back. “I can’t help you. I can’t pick anything up!”
Kellen put his head down, running for the corner hutch where Delaney had always kept a Costco-sized box of Morton salt. Pray Jesus it was still there. Icy fingers clutched at her heart as she watched Carlos’s head bob up and down, his slight weight bouncing against the breadth of Kellen’s chest, his eyes glassy and wide. He must be petrified. She wanted to run to him, drag him from Kellen, and hold him to her chest.
Which, even in the midst of all this chaos, freaked her the fuck out. Since when did she want to hold little kids with filthy hands and runny noses?
With a holler of pain, the cabinet doors slammed against Kellen’s fingers, but he managed to fling them open against the roaring wind. They ripped from their hinges, crashing against the wall and breaking apart in splintering, cracking chunks.
Marcella might have breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of that salt, if not for the dark, ominous figure approaching Kellen and Carlos from behind. “Kellen! Throw the damn salt! Hurry! Throw it over your shoulders
now
!” she screamed.
And then a glimpse of the demon’s face made her take pause. She knew that face—knew the form he’d taken because he’d once fought with another demon over it.
Abbadon
—a demon that rather enjoyed destroying everything in his path. “Wait, Kellen! Abbadon! You son of a bitch, knock it off now!”
She floated directly toward him, suspended in mid-air so they stood, er, hovered, face-to-face. She shook a finger under his nose. “There’s a little boy here, you piece of shit! How dare you come here and frighten him. If he has nightmares, I swear to you, I’ll hunt your gooey ass down and make you miserable for as long as I have to wear this ugly dress. I hate to be the one to tell you, but it looks like I’m stuck with this frock for eternity. It would so suck to be you, if that’s the case. Vengeance
will
be mine.”
His ominous form staggered backward, swaying like one of those big blow-up ghosts people tethered on their front lawns at Halloween. “Fuck off, Marcella. I’m just doing my job,” he spat with scorn, his words echoing with eerie vibrations.
She opened her mouth in disbelief, her eyes wide with fiery admonishment. “Did you just swear in front of
a child
?”