Demon

DEMON

Samantha Lee

* * *

Smashwords Edition

Copyright Samantha Lee, 2022. All Rights Reserved.

The right of Samantha Lee to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

First published as an e-book in 2012. Originally published in paperback in 2003 by Scholastic on their Point Horror imprint.

This e-book has been produced by Ryan Thomas.

Cover artwork Copyright Dave Carson, 2012.

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For Castelli - and get-out clauses.

Demon

Between two garbage cans an old woman in a black dress was transforming into something indescribable. Something with scales and claws and hooves, a thick tail with a scorpion sting at the end, a forked tongue in a lipless mouth. And eyes… so many eyes…

Prologue

It was Jimmy who unearthed the thing, found it under a stone while he was scrabbling about in the sand.

It was the hottest day of the summer so far. New Mexico hot. HOT. Dad had suggested that they come out for a picnic, some place cool, away from the steaming city pavements. But, as was usual on these excursions, they’d got lost somewhere on the way to the Springs.

Mom was navigating and they’d gone thirty miles in the wrong direction before they discovered that she was holding the map upside down. Dad had exploded and there’d been one of those nasty rows that had the baby howling and Jimmy and Pee Wee holding on to each other, stomachs churning, in the back. Then Pee Wee felt sick and they’d had to stop so he could throw up on the side of the road. And what with one thing and another, at three o’clock, when everybody was famished and half dead with thirst, they’d given up the ghost as far as a picnic area was concerned and driven off the road into the desert, and parked the beat up station wagon in shade of a giant flowering cactus and put up the beach umbrellas and unfolded the picnic tables and chairs and got out the coleslaw and ham and tomato sandwiches (peanut butter for Pee Wee who was fussy about his food) and cans of coke and eaten the picnic right there, in the middle of nowhere.

The coke was warm but by that time everybody was past caring. There was no ice and no desert. Something had gone wrong with the catch on the cool-box and the ice-cream had melted into a sticky chocolate sea with pecans floating in it, like dead flies.

As if they hadn’t enough flies, Dad had said. The place was crawling with them.

Mom said it wasn’t the flies she was worried about, it was the lizards and the scorpions and the rattlers. Why did they have to come out to the back end of beyond, putting themselves in danger of life and limb, when they could have been sitting at home in a nice air-conditioned apartment, drinking iced tea and watching a re-run of the Simpsons?

And Dad, who by this time had had three beers, had said, Can it! and crawled into the back of the station wagon for a snooze while Mom fed the baby and tried to keep Pee Wee quiet so that nobody would disturb his nap.

Which is why Jimmy had been able to wander off by himself. And since he had been told not to touch anything, he touched everything he could lay his hands on, just to be ornery and also to pass the time until Dad woke up and drove them back to civilisation. While he was about it Jimmy took out his frustrations on anything that moved. He stomped on centipedes and squashed beetles and beat a small unidentified rodent to a bloody pulp with a stick that he always carried about him for just such a purpose. The same stick that he used to upend the stone under which he found the Dreamcatcher.

He didn’t know what it was, of course. But it obviously wasn’t alive and wouldn’t bite, so he picked it up gingerly between his finger and thumb and shook it to dislodge the sand that had stuck to the surface. Then he turned it over in his grimy hands, examining it.

It wasn’t very big, about six inches in diameter and round, like a moon. The rim was made out of some hard substance, wood probably, bound with faded orange material and decorated with beads and feathers. The centre was hollow and held a tracery of cat-gut, woven like a spider’s web. Jimmy held it up to the sun, squinting his eyes against the ferocity of the light. If you tilted it a certain way, it looked as though the design in the middle was a face, with narrow feral eyes and a slit of a mouth, the lips turned up at the edges in a sly smirk.

It’s a Dreamcatcher, his Mom told him, when he carried it back for inspection. The Indians make ‘em. Hang ‘em over the baby’s cribs to keep the evil spirits away. It’s supposed to make ‘em sleep sounder. The outside bit traps the good dreams. The inside has holes in it so the nightmares can go right on through and disappear back into the dark where they came from.

What if it worked the other way around? said Jimmy who, though still young, had watched enough Japanese cartoons to have developed a macabre side to his personality.

The Medicine Man blesses them, I think, said his Mom. Whatever, they’re supposed to bring good luck.

Then we’d better hang it on the windshield, said Dad, who had come up behind them, yawning and stretching. That way maybe we’ll get back quicker than we got here.

He unhooked the dancing Elvis that generally gyrated over the dashboard and hung the Indian charm in its place. Then they all piled into the station wagon and headed for home.

Turn the map right way up, will you, Pearl? said Dad, sarcastically, as they bumped over the rocks and sand-dunes to the highway. Otherwise we might end up in Texas.

Now don’t start, said Mom, crossly. You haven’t had the handling of the children all afternoon.

At which point two things happened at once. The baby woke up and started to cry. And the air-conditioning in the car went on the blink.

The sun had gone down somewhat so it wasn’t quite as stifling as it had been earlier on. But even so, when they opened the windows, the air coming in was hotter that the stuff going out. So they’d wound them back up again. It was stuffy and sticky and, what with the noise of the baby and the fact that the car wouldn’t go more than forty miles an hour without risk of the engine seizing up, tempers frayed pretty fast.

Mom said, never again, she swore she was never, ever coming out in this rattle trap again as long as she lived. This always happened, she said, she should know better, she said, and why in the name of all that was holy, didn’t Dad buy a decent car?

And Jimmy, in an attempt to stop his parents launching into yet another row, had said, yeah, why didn’t they?

Then Dad lost his rag again. Did everybody think he was made of money, he yelled, how much did they think it cost to feed a wife and three kids? And Mom said she knew how much it cost, thank you very much, she was the one who did the marketing and if Dad spent less time with his cronies down at the Pool Hall there would be plenty left for a decent car. It would be a saving, she said, on all the garage bills they had to pay just to keep this rust-bucket on the road.

Pee Wee put his hands over his ears and screwed up his eyes to try to stop from bawling. Jimmy put an arm round his brother’s shoulders and looked at the face grinning at him from the Dreamcatcher, which was bobbing above the windshield in front. When he spoke it was as if he was begging someone – anyone - to come to his aid...

I wish we had a real cool car, he said. A sport’s model. One of those super fast ones like they have on the video games. Zoom. Zoom. Then we’d be outta here and home in no time.

Or not, said his Dad, putting his foot flat down on the accelerator in an attempt to coax an extra ounce of speed out of the station wagon. Depending. Those computer things usually end up crashing, don’t they?

So what, said Jimmy, feelingly. Anything would be better than this.

Speaking later about the horrendous pile-up, the driver of the freight wagon that had been coming in the opposite direction, shook his head in disbelief.

Still can’t understand it, he said. Long, straight stretch of highway. Nothing else in sight. Car suddenly took off, weaving from side to side like a crazy thing. Missed me by inches. Barrelled right into a nine foot cactus. Did a double somersault. Burst into flames. In all my years on the road I never saw anything like it. You’d ‘a sworn the Devil himself was drivin’.

1

The old woman set up shop on the pavement at the very edge of the town square. No one took much notice as she lowered her bundle onto the hot asphalt and began to unpack the meagre contents, laying the bits and pieces out carefully on a clean square of bleached linen. A couple of dozen cactus fruit, a few strings of garlic, a clutch of hand-carved totem dolls. And a single Dreamcatcher, beaded and feathered, which she hung on a pole like a little flag, to draw attention to her wares.

It was the tail end of market day in Backwater Ridge, the town as full as it would ever be with visiting farmers touting their produce and thrifty housewives eager for a bargain. Most vendors displayed their squash and melons and ripe corn cobs on stalls. There were specialist stands too, for herbs or houseplants or hand-woven items. Only the poorest, who couldn’t afford the price of a regular place, sold from the pavement. Down-and-outs offering the contents of other people’s garbage, throw-outs which they’d carefully collected over the previous week. Ancient radios, spare parts for outdated computers, broken toasters. And others like the old woman with unspecified items for sale. Anything from jewellery fashioned in wire to bunches of wild oregano collected from the countryside.

The old woman hunkered down beside her pitch and waited for a customer.

She didn’t have to wait long.

Lori’s eye was drawn to the Dreamcatcher as soon as she entered the square. It moved lazily, feathers floating in the light breeze of the early evening. It almost looked as though it was waving to her.

Lori was on her way home from a late drama class, daydreaming of getting the lead in the school musical, some hopes, which they were casting next day. The last Saturday of the current semester. Rehearsals would go on all the long, hot Summer break. Everyone who was anyone would be in the school musical. If you didn’t get a part you were as good as dead. Nothing to do until September. Nothing to do except dream and fry.

Even at this hour it was boiling. Lori’s shirt was sticking to her and the scorching sun beat down from the bright white sky like a hammer on her head. She flicked the fringe away from her eyes. And the Dreamcatcher did a little twirl, beckoning her over.

Lori trotted across the square to where the old woman sat, still as a statue. Like a raven roosting, in her fustian dress.

What is it? asked Lori, fingering the charm.

The old woman looked up at her under hooded eyes. Crows eyes, sharp