The Demonists Read online

John continued as he watched the red light on the infrared camera turn away from him and down toward the floor. “Fritz believes that this is a bloodstain left when the previous owner murdered his wife, supposedly in this very spot.”

  “Just one of the many disturbing events that have transpired in this seemingly cursed home, and part of the reason why Fritz refuses to live here anymore,” added Theodora as she knelt beside her husband for a closer look at the darkened spot.

  “Right,” John agreed. “Once he began renovations on the old property, he started to notice odd sounds and smells. He even reports seeing shadow figures from the corner of his eyes.”

  “John, why don’t you get some EMF readings while I get out the blood test kit?”

  John heard the sounds of Theo rummaging through her things as the red light on the camera again faced him. He removed the cellphone-sized device from his pocket and held it over the spot on the floor, slowly moving it over the area. As he did so, he reminded his viewers that he was looking for the high electromagnetic fields emitted by ghostly beings, then expressed disappointment that the device remained perfectly silent, as it had throughout the evening’s investigation.

  John felt his wife poke his arm in the darkness. “Here’s the kit, hon.” He reached for the offered items. “In this bottle is a hydrogen peroxide mixture that reacts with the chemical found in blood called catalase. If this really is blood,” John explained as he removed the cover on the plastic bottle and squirted some solution onto a cotton swab, “the liquid will start to bubble.”

  He knew it wouldn’t, but he had to go through the motions for the live show. Again the camera panned down to the stain. He could imagine the viewers at home, sitting on the edges of their seats, eyes glued to the screen, hoping that John would confirm a bloodstain. He waited a moment, letting the excitement build, then slowly rubbed the saturated swab across the stain.

  “No bubbles,” he announced. “This stain is definitely not blood.”

  “I’m guessing some sort of petroleum product maybe,” Theo offered from where she squatted next to her husband. She placed the tip of a well-manicured finger in the center of the dark spot and gently rubbed at it. “Whatever it is, it’s saturated the wood. It could be that it reacts to temperature fluctuations within the house during changes in the seasons, and that’s what led the homeowner to believe it’s a hint of paranormal activity.”

  John’s walkie-talkie squawked and he removed it from his belt, hoping for something, anything that would save the show—maybe some disembodied footsteps, or better yet, a creepy voice recording from the EVP session Phil Carnagin and Becky Toomes were conducting in the basement.

  “Go for John,” he said.

  “John, it’s Phil. We’ve found something I think you should see.”

  “We’ll be right down,” John said, forcing himself not to sigh with relief. “How are we doing for time?” he asked Jackson.

  “Commercial coming up,” the cameraman replied.

  “Excellent,” John said. “We’ll break here, and when we return—”

  “The basement, with Phil and Becky,” Theodora finished.

  “And we’re into commercial,” Jackson announced, lowering the camera.

  “To the basement, then,” John said, clicking on his flashlight.

  “Where our ratings are going to be if something doesn’t happen soon,” Theodora added, turning on her own flashlight.

  “You’ve done it now,” John warned, already heading toward the kitchen where the door to the basement awaited them. “Now all hell is going to break loose.”

  “We can only hope,” Theodora said wryly.

  John chuckled. He had to agree with her. They’d researched this place pretty thoroughly, even sent in a preinvestigation team that had garnered good results—EMF spikes, interesting electronic voice phenomena (EVP), shadow entities. The place had seemed perfect for their Halloween broadcast. Hell, it had won out over a Scottish castle!

  So why is it now so silent? John wondered as they headed down the stairs. “Let’s hope for something good,” he said aloud. “Or next Halloween, we’ll be at home handing out candy.”

  “Full-size?” Theoasked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Will we be the house that gives out full-size candy bars, or the mini bites?”

  “If we lose the Halloween show, we’ll have no choice but to go cheap—bite-size all-the-way.”

  Theodora carefully descended into the basement, following the beam from her husband’s flashlight. Again, she reached out to the home, trying to rouse dormant energies of those who had once resided there.

  And still there was silence.

  That wasn’t unusual in newer homes, where the structures hadn’t had enough time to collect the residual energies of life and death. But this place, a genuinely old house that had seen a lot of living and dying throughout a lot of years, offered her nothing.

  It just wasn’t right.

  “We’re back in one and a half,” Jackson announced, clumping heavily on the wooden steps behind them.

  John had reached the bottom of the stairs, where his flashlight played over the cobwebbed surface of some old apple crates that had been stacked there.

  “Phil!” he called as he stepped around the crates. “Becky!”

  “Back here!” Phil yelled.

  The cellar was larger than Theodora had expected, probably extending beyond the house and under the backyard. She allowed her defenses to remain down as she and Jackson followed her husband through the darkness, skirting rusted old bike frames and farm tools.

  And still there was nothing.

  They finally came upon Phil and Becky in a tiny, shelved room where the products of fall canning had probably been stored for the winter. Now the shelves were empty of everything but a thick coating of dust, as was the rest of the room. Except for a single, sealed jar on the floor in the center of the room.

  “What is it?” Theo asked from the doorway, feeling Jackson trying to maneuver around her for a better shot.

  “Less than a minute,” he said as he pushed past her.

  “We’ll pick up with a discussion of this,” John said, his flashlight beam illuminating the jar.

  Theodora couldn’t take her eyes from the object. There was something about it that didn’t seem right.

  She saw Jackson give John the signal, and he launched into the next segment of their live show.

  “Welcome back to the Spirit Chasers Halloween show, and thanks again for joining us. Just before the break, Phil and Becky called, asking Theo and me to join them in the basement, where they found this.” He squatted and moved the beam of his flashlight across the bronzy surface of the jar on the floor.

  He continued to talk, but Theodora was only vaguely aware of the words leaving his mouth. Her eyes were transfixed by the surface of the container as her husband’s light played across it.

  The sound was faint, like that of ice cracking as it was warmed by the afternoon sun, and then she saw it—a crack in the smooth surface of the rounded jar.

  Her breath caught in her throat as her senses were suddenly bombarded, her head filled with staccato images—images of heinous acts committed in this house, in this basement.

  “Where did you find it?” she gasped, interrupting her husband’s monologue. She felt the eyes of the team fall upon her, but she couldn’t take her own from the jar on the floor as more spiderweb cracks appeared on its surface. “Where did you find it?” she repeated, nearly screaming. “Tell me!”

  Jackson had turned the camera directly on her. After all, it was a live show and this kind of thing was great for ratings, but ratings were the furthest thing from Theodora’s mind.

  “Theo, are you—” John began, but was interrupted by Phil.

  “In here,” he said, a hint of fear and uncertainty in his voice. “It was over in that corner, on its side.”

  “So you touched it?” Theodora asked. “You touched it and moved it here?”

&nbs
p; She saw the raw image of a little girl falling down a staircase, and felt her pain as her baby teeth smacked the edge of a step, gouging the wood as they were knocked from her mouth. Theo’s stomach roiled as she struggled to raise her psychic defenses against whatever was seeping from the container.

  “Something’s happening,” she heard Becky say from across the room. Theo had always suspected that Becky was a bit of a psychic as well.

  “Would someone care to fill me in?” John asked cheerily, although his wife could hear the edge to his voice.

  She ignored it and asked a question of her own. “Did you drop it?”

  “No,” Phil replied, sounding a bit defensive. “We just moved it to the center of the room so we could see it better. What—?” He abruptly stopped as another, louder, crack sounded, followed by the frantic beeping from one of their EMF detectors.

  Another wave of images poured over Theodora, and made her witness to more pain. She tried desperately to block it out, but the events were coming so fast and furious that she could barely discern what she was seeing. All she knew was that it was horrible, and that death was always the outcome.

  “You shouldn’t have touched it,” she said breathlessly. “You shouldn’t have—”

  More, louder cracks came from the jar, and she pushed back the surge of panic that threatened to overtake her. “We have to leave,” she managed, her eyes still glued to the object. “We have to get out of here before—”

  “Theo, what’s going on?” John demanded, reaching out to grasp her arms.

  The container shuddered then with a whiplike snap, and a dense mist began to seep from the growing fissures.

  “I know why the house was so quiet,” Theo cried. She gazed at the vapor filling the small room, and at glowing white sigils that were beginning to manifest on the walls. “How could I have been so stupid?” She tried to pull away from John. “It wasn’t that they weren’t here . . . they were silenced.”

  The beeping of the EMF detectors suddenly stopped, their batteries drained.

  Images were pounding at Theo’s skull, demanding that she look at them.

  To see what was about to be released into the world.

  “Oh God,” she whispered, a new image worming its way onto the screen of her mind’s eye. She saw Fritz . . . as well as others, dressed in bloodred robes, painting the symbols upon the walls.

  Symbols that would silence the voices of the home.

  Silence the spirits so they could not warn the investigators.

  Theo fell against her husband.

  “That’s enough,” John said, wrapping his arms around her and holding her tightly. “Go to commercial,” he ordered Jackson, but the man kept right on shooting.

  Theodora managed to lift her head to look at Jackson, and what she saw filled her with absolute dread. Jackson did not do what was asked of him because he was no longer in control. She could see the spirits around him, manipulating him, bending him to their will.

  While at first the small room had been empty, it was now filled— filled with the dead, and something more.

  “It’s too late,” Theo said as the atmosphere became even more oppressive.

  “That’s it for me,” Phil announced. “I’m getting the fuck out of here while—” He exploded before he could finish his sentence or take a step. Blood and shreds of clothing and skin covered the ceiling and walls of the tiny room.

  And Theo could see what it was that had done this to their friend.

  Within the mist that had leaked from the container were terrible things, demonic things.

  Harbingers of something larger, and far more terrible.

  Jackson’s camera ceased to function midway through the slaughter, but until that moment—

  He’d had no desire to continue filming, sending scenes of the bloodletting into the living rooms of millions of viewers, but he’d had no choice.

  He’d wanted to drop his camera to the cellar floor and flee for his life.

  But something held him fast and made him continue to perform what had been his chosen profession for the last eleven years; something that chortled happily, its amusement echoing painfully in the hollows of his skull.

  Watch! it commanded him. Watch and see the fate that will soon befall the world.

  Becky was closest to the container as it began to vibrate to the point that its image through the camera’s viewfinder was blurred. Then it exploded in a flash of black so intense that it was darker than darkness of the environment surrounding it. Pieces of the jar spun through the air, hissing shrapnel that sought out the warmth and fragility of Becky’s flesh. The pieces were drawn to her, to her life, and each and every jagged fragment found its way into her body.

  The presences inside Jackson’s skull laughed hysterically as Becky’s body danced and twitched, before it finally collapsed in upon itself, bones shattered, muscles shredded, tendons cut.

  John was picked up by something that glinted wetly in the dark of the storage room. It lifted him as if he weighed nothing and slammed him against the nearby wall of stone, again and again, until the white rock was stained black.

  Theodora’s screams allowed Jackson a brief moment of focus. The beautiful medium hung above the dirt floor, her head tossed back, the tendons in her neck straining as she screamed, and screamed, and screamed. Ghostly things—demonic things—swam about her: serpents of shadow, eels of darkness, entering her body, dissolving into her flesh. The spirits inside Jackson’s head cheered excitedly as the entities flowed into Theo’s helpless body.

  John’s pathetic moans filled the basement space as he crawled into the camera’s view, a bloody hand reaching up toward his wife.

  She is the vessel now, the voices chimed, and Jackson did not understand, nor would he ever, for the evil spirits were done with him then. He began to cry, crying for his friends, but mostly for himself, because he knew he would not be spared this day.

  But then he felt himself released from evil’s loathsome clutches, and he almost fooled himself into thinking that he might live. He dropped the camera, ending the horrific transmission as it smashed on the dirt floor, and he spun away from the blood-drenched storage room, running through the near pitch-blackness toward where he remembered the stairs to be.

  They let him find them, one of his sneakered feet falling upon the creaking wood of the first step as he prepared to propel himself upward.

  He thought of the happiness he would feel as he ascended to the kitchen and raced through the mudroom door into the yard, where he would hungrily gulp the cool autumn air. And he knew that he would cry tears of sadness for his friends, but also sheer joy that he had not shared their terrible fate.

  That he had survived.

  He would have experienced all of that, if only he had been allowed to live.

  If only.

  CHAPTER TWO

  In this place, John Fogg was a child again. In puddles that spread across the vast city street, he could see the reflection of himself clad in his favorite pajamas.

  He was remembering a time, so very long ago now, that he had gone to New York with his folks to see a holiday show. He hadn’t been paying attention, caught up in the excitement of the city and the season, and had stepped away from his parents, eager to see the next of Macy’s wonderfully magical display windows. And suddenly he could no longer find them in the always moving crowd of people that flowed around him.

  No matter where he looked, he saw only unfamiliar faces, and he had cried out for his mother and father for what seemed like an eternity, until finally they were before him. The looks of relief on their faces slowly dissolved to anger, and then the scolding began.

  But he would take the scolding and the nearly painful squeezing pressure of his mother’s grip upon his hand.

  They had found him, and that was all that mattered. John was back on those cold winter streets, only now it was nighttime, and it was raining. He was alone, clad only in his pajamas.

  Why had he gone out onto the city st
reets wearing only his pajamas?

  He had no answer, just an ever-increasing sense of dread that expanded in his belly like a balloon.

  “Hello?” he called out, but the only response was the patter of freezing rain on the hard, puddle-dappled streets.

  Why am I here? Why am I alone?

  It was the first time that you let the fear in, answered a voice from someplace nearby.

  John spun, looking about Herald Square, finding only parked cars and gray, rain-drenched buildings—not a soul to be found, except for him.

  “Who’s there?” he demanded. “Ma? Dad?”

  Someone laughed. At least he thought it was a someone—hoped that it was a someone.

  Your fear was like a door, John Fogg, the mysterious voice said. So intense that it swung wide, opening you up to all sorts of possibilities.

  “Why can’t I see you?” John asked, his eyes darting to every corner, every shadow. “Why don’t you show yourself?”

  Do you want to see me, John Fogg? the voice asked with all sincerity. Do you really want to see me?

  John didn’t know how he should answer at first, but he managed to push past the expanding bubble of fear in his gut. At least he would have one answer; and for him, it was always about answers.

  “Yes.” He braced himself. “Yes, I really do want to see you.”

  Again he heard that laugh, only this time it was joined by others— many others.

  Well, who am I to deny a child’s wishes?

  A patch of shadow across from where John stood in front of one of Macy’s blackened windows shimmered and waved like a stretch of ocean caressed by the wind. A shape pulled free, standing motionless, watching the boy.

  John felt the nearly uncontrollable urge to run but held his ground, watching the man.

  Maybe . . . maybe he would help him.

  Slowly he began to cross toward the figure. A vague swath of light from a nearby traffic light suddenly illuminated its face, and what John saw stopped him dead in the middle of the deathly quiet Manhattan street.

  The face was as white as the moon in the sky, with eyes as round as the planetoid but void of anything other than deep, sucking darkness. Its mouth was pulled back in a smile that—John supposed—was to be considered friendly and comforting, but couldn’t have been further from that. It reminded him of an old animal trap he had once seen in his uncle’s shed while on a summer visit to West Virginia—wide and jaggedly sharp, stained black with old blood.