MS Demon

Where in the World is Arlo Grimm Part 25: MS Demon

6am…

I was pretty sure the guy on the Hills Bros. coffee can was in love with me. Because the way I had been sleeping—or not sleeping, as the case might be—I am pretty sure I had been keeping him in business the past few months.

Gray daylight slithered through the windows and slider doors by the time I wandered downstairs in my Supergirl T-shirt and started the coffee brewing. I hadn’t gone back to sleep, partially because of the horrible nightmare I’d experienced and partially because Puddin’ Head snores like a bastard. You should have seen the pissed-off cat eye he’d given me when I startled awake that way, too. He’d have done Martha Stewart proud.

My nerves still felt as rattled as a dancing skeleton, not just because of the nightmare but because of what something deep in my mind was telling me the nightmare meant. That it wasn’t just a dream. That it was some sort of message and some sort of warning. And some sort of clue.

Dammit, sometimes I wished Evil just came out with things instead of getting off so much on the game.

Bodies burning. Rats. Demon girls. Patricia. Arly in chains. A children’s nursery rhyme.

I shivered, getting a good idea now of where things were going, though I wasn’t sure if they gave me any clue as to where Arly was being held.

My hand absently went to the locket at my throat and for some reason I felt a fraction calmer.

“Pat…” I whispered. Was she dead? Was she trying to reach me? Was something preventing her from fully materializing or telling me outright what I needed to know?

One thing I had learned was the supernatural didn’t work that way. It worked in partials and symbols and pee-in-your-pants warnings. And lucky Arly and me, we were somehow “special”; at least that’s the way Lansing had put it. I bet special didn’t always keep you from getting killed. Ask Joan of Arc.

While waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, I grabbed the remote and clicked on the tube. I probably shouldn’t have. A reporter, some chick with frizzy red hair and a my-crap-doesn’t-stink attitude, was interviewing another doctor at New Salem Memorial.

“…appears to be a mutation of the Bubonic Plague, but it is not responding to any conventional treatments.”

“So, you’re saying this has the potential to spread throughout New Salem, become an epidemic?” the reporter asked. Damned it there wasn’t a prissy little smirk on her lips. She loved this kind of crap. It was drama, dammit, and she was Lois frickin’ Lane.

“We don’t’ want to start a panic, but we are looking at a possible quarantine—"

Quarantine? The word made my stomach drop. The memory of the sign nailed to the building in my dream came back to me. I clicked off the TV, shuddering, wishing more than ever I hadn’t turned it on. But avoiding it would not help and it was nothing I wasn’t putting together in the dark recesses of my mind anyway. Quarantine. Bubonic plague. Freakin’ great.

I tossed the remote on the couch, then went to the kitchen and grabbed the coffee pot and a mug that said, “My Cat Thinks He Owns Me” on its front. I took the whole pot upstairs. I was going to need it.

When I walked into my room, my big yellow squatter was still languishing on his corner of the bed. He gave me the hairy cat eye, like I was bothering him or something by just walking into my own bedroom, then went back to sleep. Again with the snoring. Ugh

I set my mug on the small table in the corner that held my computer, poured myself a cup and set the pot down beside it. With a sigh, I fired up my computer and wished I was back in Kansas.

Dammit, things had been so much easier when I was a kid, before my parents died and my sister was taken, I mean. I wished I could go back to having little girl dreams and innocent days. It would be so much easier than…this.

I know, when you’re a kid, you can’t wait to grow up. And children had their share of fears—the bully, how to get out of eating something your mom cooked for supper you didn’t like, and were you going to miss your favorite TV show. Seems like silly stuff when you look back, especially with the litany of adult worries that start at puberty. But at least when you’re a child you don’t dwell on them so constantly. You can still forget your troubles and hide yourself in your little girl fantasies and dolls and games.

Ring-a-ring-of-roses…

Well, maybe not that game.

I sighed again. It was all relative, I suppose. And you played the cards you’d been dealt, even if the dealer was Evil.

The computer beeped and the flat screen told me Windows had loaded. I clicked my Internet icon and brought up Google.

After downing of coffee, I typed Ring Around the Rosie into the search box, noticing my hands were shaking a bit.

It took me only a few minutes to learn the rhythm had a number of variations related to region, though the tune remained constant.

And almost as quickly I learned it had an urban legend attached to it.

According to the 20th century interpretation the rhyme related to the Black Plague.

Ring around the rosie,
Pocketful of posies.
Ashes, ashes.
We all fall down.

The first line referred to the red rings that appeared on victims’ faces. The second indicated the sweet smelling flowers stuffed in the unfortunates’ pockets to cover the odor of the erupting sores or ward off illness. Ashes, ashes originally was atishu, atishu, pertaining to the sound of sneezing, but apparently my demon girl was a bit more literal than that. The last line…well, that’s obvious.

I spent another half hour researching the Bubonic Plague, not much liking what I found and how it mimicked the points in my dream and what the news was reporting in New Salem. A plague. Here in New Salem. A demon girl. A demonic harbinger of a dreadful event or the direct cause of it?

“Jesus, that just soooo Old World,” I whispered without any humor. But Evil stuck with what worked, I guess. Or what they thought worked, since we usually ended up kicking their ass in the end. But you had to give Evil its props for creating unrest and fear. Maybe that’s what sustained them until they achieved their final end.

And if they couldn’t directly kill Arly, as Genie Lansing had once told him, were they hoping to use him for something associated with the plague? Or something deeper than that?

Some things suddenly made deadly sense while other things did not. And nothing about it told me where to find him.

I closed out of the search engine and leaned back in my chair, about to switch off the computer. The screen suddenly went black.

I was about to let out a curse, then remembered the Blue Screen was the one to worry about if something was wrong with your machinery. I should have let the curse fly anyway. Because an instant later the Black Screen reminded me there were evils worse than Microsoft.

My name in dark red letters flashed in the center of the ebony screen. It vanished almost as suddenly as it had come.

Then another name blinked in its place.

Praetallious.

In a moment of panic I couldn’t really explain, I jabbed the off button. But the name didn’t go away. It kept blinking on the screen and a little girl’s laughter suddenly echoed from everywhere in my bedroom.

I let out a startled yip and noticed Puddin’ Head jumping off the bed. Evil didn’t frighten him, it just annoyed him. I could tell by the put-out way he sauntered from the room. Had he been capable of grumbling he would have.

Then the laughter stopped and the name vanished from the screen, as if the laughter had taken it.

“Patricia?” I asked, getting out of my chair. “Are you here?”

Everything became suddenly far too silent, though for the quickest of heartbeats I swore I heard my name whispered by a little girl.

Demons, Monkeys and Rats, Oh My!

Where in the World is Arlo Grimm? Part 24: Demons, Monkeys and Rats, Oh My!

Can anybody please tell me why I always end up naked on these cases?

I mean, really, I’m used to being naked. Probably nine times out of ten I feel more comfortable out of clothes than in them. But you know what happens to naked girls in horror movies? They are right there in line with Miss-I’m-too-stupid-to-stay-out-of-the-cellar, Miss Naughty Bitch and the Gimp to be offed first by the killer in the hockey mask.

And why is it you have to be naked and freezing before some butthead with an axe or a butcher knife appears?

Ok, so I maybe wasn’t totally naked. I did have on my stripper’s thong. Pffft! Like that was going to keep Evil from drooling over my naughty bits.

Somehow, I was on the street that runs through the waterfront in New Salem. I had no idea how I got there, why I was there, or how the hell to get the hell out of there. Indistinct light came from somewhere yet nowhere; I saw no street lamps. A serpentine mist slithered along the street and the ground felt lumpy and freezing beneath my bare feet. Cobblestones, I think. Like I was on the street back a hundred years ago. That didn’t make me feel any better and I let out a shiver that would have sobered even the worst drunk at the Red Lagoon, considering my present lack of clothing. Speaking of the Lagoon, I didn’t see it anywhere. Or any of the other buildings normally lining the waterfront, for that matter. All the buildings to either side of me looked dark, old and leaning, almost arcing inward at their tops. Windows were black glass, reflecting nothing. Some were boarded shut and there were signs bailed to some buildings. At first I couldn’t make out what was written on them because they shimmered, blurry, but finally I got it: Quarantine, the signs said.

Another shiver and I wrapped my arms about myself, making sure I covered as much of my boobs as possible. Normally I am not the least bit shy about hauling out the girls but I had a feeling something was watching me that wasn’t….human, maybe. Something dirty. Something that wanted to see every part of me with its black slithering tongue.

Ok, maybe I am being a bit dramatic but if you had been naked running around in the snow a few months ago with a witch chasing you, you’d be dramatic too. Really, you would. Trust me.

Sounds. Something…at first I thought it was laughter, and it was, at least partly. I heard the demon girl laughing again, somewhat distant, hollow, echoing through the dark canyon of the street. But another sound mixed with it…far off screams. Screams of utter agony and hopelessness.

Another shiver, even stronger than the first.

My first urge was to join in the screaming since my nerves had just about reached breaking point, but I choked it back. My second urge was to shout out, “Where the hell am I?” but I got the idea neither option would do me any good whatsoever.

I started moving forward, clutching to myself even tighter, gooseflesh crawling on my body and my breathing getting shallow. The chilled cobblestones chewed at my feet. My heart banged against my ribs like some frantic troll pounding to get out of me.

I become suddenly aware of something moving within the mist but couldn’t see what it was. But it gave me a rising wave of dread in the pit of my stomach.

An odor drifted to my nostrils, sickly sweet, like singed meat. At almost the same instant ash started drifting from the sky and I looked up. The sky was utterly black, endless. The flakes, gray and hissing, swirl from its depths. They didn’t burn as they touch my skin, but the sound alone was enough to make me start.

To my right was an alley. I was certain it hadn’t been there a moment ago, before I looked up at the black sky, because light flickered from it, orange and sickly yellow. I moved towards it, immediately backing off the moment I looked within. The light came from flames, their ribbony light cavorting with shadow on the building walls like lovers embraced in orgasmic frenzy.

I had all I could do to keep the nausea flooding my stomach from surging into my throat. I jammed a hand over my mouth and nose, forgoing modesty, because keeping myself from puking and covering my nostrils against the sickly sweet burning odor was suddenly the priority.

Now I knew what caused that ghastly stench: bodies. Burning bodies. They were heaped one upon the other, at least twenty of them, flesh charred and bubbling, hands reaching out, blackened mouths uttering horrible moans and shrieks. Flame, unsympathetic to their awful pleas, devoured their hair and skin. Boiling blood burst from their eyes, ears and nostrils. Black smoke billowed into the ebony sky.

Help us…please…help us…

I mumbled something against my hand, not sure what, as I backed farther away into the street, knowing I was a heartbeat away from hurling or maybe just losing my mind completely. I could no longer look at them, everything inside me wanting to scream and run and force the horrible sight from my mind.

Ring-a-ring of roses….

Children’s voices suddenly emanated from everywhere, yet nowhere. I could not see them but had the sense they waited behind the walls of the dark buildings, watching, praying, crying; singing, hoping, dying.

Again things were moving within the mist and as I looked down the scream I’d been suppressing surged up from the depths of my soul and cut loose the hand I still had clamped about my mouth and nose.

As I as I stumbled a few steps backward to get away from the things skittering in the mist I pulled my hand from my mouth and wrapped my arms about my breasts again.

I saw what moved within the mist now: Rats. Hundreds of them. Squeaking, darting, scaring the living hell right out of me. I hated rats, especially these huge wharf rats that populated the waterfront. They were like evil naked squirrels. That’s what my mother had called them when I was a kid and as far as I was concerned it was accurate.

One of them leaped and I reacted. I would have made a punter proud because I sent that little bastard flying a good thirty feet, ass-first. The very touch of it against my bare foot made me shudder, but a small measure of satisfaction came with the sight of the thing rebounding from a building wall.

But there were too many of them and they made the mist seem a gray living carpet, converging on me.

Ahead two things appeared and the scream I had made against my hand now launched full throttle. I swear it stopped the rats for an instant.

“Arly!” I yelled, forgetting my fear and starting towards him, despite the rodents.

Chloe….help….me…Saint….Patricia…

He had appeared in the street, his naked body semi-solid, bruised and battered, face drawn, with welts criss-crossing his forehead and cheeks. Blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. He tried to reach for me but something stopped him, shackles that vanished into nowhere above and behind him. Before I could reach him, he vanished. Just like that. And I think my heart and hope stopped for just a moment.

“Nooooo!” I yelled. But he was gone. Again. And in his place was the little demon girl, somehow obscene in a tattered Easter dress and shredded bonnet. Her face appeared greenish even in the indistinct light. Rings bubbled on her features, grew black and pieces of her flesh flaked off, whirling away into the other ash drizzling from the sky.

“Ashes, ashes,” she said, her voice heavy and hollow, only vaguely like that of a little girl.

“Give him back to me!” I yelled it before I could think and it was stupid but what else do you say in that type of a situation? You don’t ask a demon for its green card and “would you care for a spot of tea?” is out of the question.

Oh, did I tell you I’m prone to babbling and saying dumb things when I get really rattled? Now you know.

Around me the rats swarmed closer. They circled, leaping out of the mist, jaws snapping, barely missing me with their rotted yellow teeth. I kicked at them, missed one, launched another. Too many.

“Give up, Miss Everson,” the demon said, the voice even deeper this time. “You can’t beat us. And you can’t have him back. We need him for what’s coming. You didn’t think He would entrust everything to Ficatier, did you?”

“What the hell are you?” I screamed at her/it. It came from fright but the only thing that scared me worse than rats was snakes, so ugly demon girls and supernatural boos took a distant third.

“You didn’t really think he could stop us all, did you?” the demon girl said, drifting forward.

In the alley behind me a wailing ululated through the night. The demon girl laughed and it sounded like goblins sawing a fiddle.

The stench of burning flesh grew stronger. My legs threatened to go in two different directions and my head started to dance.

The rats grew more agitated, closing the circle. I felt their Brillo pad fur scratching my legs.

I was going to pass out. I know I was. I felt it coming on in a cold black wave. And once I did those rats would…

It suddenly dawned on me I had put on the locket before going to bed. My hand went to my throat. I felt cool metal and clutched it like I was grabbing a log in a raging river.

And sat up in bed, a scream still on my lips.

Reflections in a Locket

Where in the World is Alro Grimm? Part 23: Reflections in a Locket

4am…

It took me more than an hour to get my nerves back under control after the appearance of Arly and the demon girl in the slider glass. I was probably still a hair away from going through the ceiling if anything else startled me, but at least I didn’t feel so much like puking or crying at the moment.

I sat at the vanity in my bedroom, the small light to the left turned low, my chin resting in my hands and my elbows jammed into the vanity top. I wore my blue terrycloth robe and had pulled my hair back into a ponytail. I just stared at my haggard reflection in the mirror. I wasn’t tired, despite the dark half-circles nesting beneath my eyes and the drawn look to my cheeks. To be honest, I was a little afraid to go to sleep. And my mind was still locked on the horrific image of Arly in the glass. He had looked so…helpless, I guess would be the word, and if you knew Arly that was way out of character. He was the strong one, the guy who had chased down the witches, the guy I had started to depend on, maybe way more than I should have. You know? Because depending on people wasn’t something that had ever worked out well for me in my life. Depending on people usually just translated to losing them. In the worst possible way.

Had I lost him now, too?

No, I couldn’t let myself think that. He had tried to reach me and the demon girl told me he had gotten help from somewhere.

Patricia?

That was my guess. But it hadn’t been enough and now all I had was a few words he had whispered before vanishing, and those words meant nothing tangible to me. They didn’t tell me where he was, least not as far as I could see. But maybe they told me the one thing I really needed to focus on: they told me he was still alive. Lansing had told Arly there was something “special” about him, something that enabled him to prevail against the Sisters of the Snake and made him valuable to them when they wanted to resurrect Czcarabus. Maybe that’s why he was still alive now; maybe whatever that little girl demon was, she needed him for something.

But she didn’t need me, did she? Why hadn’t she just killed me?

Because I had the locket?

My gaze traveled downward to the locket, which lay on the vanity top before me. I had taken it out of my backpack before coming upstairs to my room, just in case that demon girl wanted it or some monkey broke in and decided to take it back.

I realize how dumb that sounds, but like I’ve said, in New Salem…well, don’t take anything for granted.

I picked up the locket and pried it open. Gazing at the two pictures, myself and Pat, a deep loneliness and sense of loss washed through me.

“Are you dead, Pat?” I whispered, something in my belly clutching. “Are you trying to reach me and help Arly?”

And did it mean I would never find her again, never know the sister I had lost so many years ago?

Goddammit!

I snapped the locket shut and forced the tears gathering in my eyes to not flow. Even so, one trickled down my left cheek. A ball of emotion lodged in my throat.

It wasn’t bad enough Arly had vanished. It wasn’t bad enough some demonic rugrat had shown up and started tormenting me. But now something was telling me I would never get to see my sister alive again, either.

Life was a bitch sometimes. And it was a worse bitch the moment you let yourself even think about being a little bit happy.

I noticed myself clenching my teeth and my jaw muscles starting to ache and forced myself to take a deep breath. I was letting the negative get the better of me because I was lonely and scared and at my wits’ end. I had to focus on the positive, that Arly was alive and trying to reach out, that Pat was trying to help and that if the damn demon girl had wanted me dead I would have been in an urn by now. Maybe it wasn’t entirely the locket; maybe I had something special, too.

Arly always told me I did. And in New Salem that wasn’t necessarily a good thing because with it came a bunch of things that went bump in the night and even in the day. And Arly and I were a magnet for them.

Well, demons or monkeys, no one as getting this locket. It might be the only thing I had of Pat’s other than my childhood memories. If they wanted the locket they were going to have to take it off my cold…

Oh, crap, maybe it was better not to think about it that way.

I slipped the locket around my neck and peered at my reflection in the vanity mirror. The locket looked natural there, somehow, and it almost felt warm against the cold chill crawling around inside my soul.

Tomorrow was a new day and maybe if I made myself sleep I would have a clearer head and be able to figure out some sort of direction. I knew one thing, M-S Lansing wasn’t going to find herself getting off the hook quite so easy, because my dislike for her and suspicions she was holding back had gotten to a near paranoid level after a day of demon girls and dead monkeys running amuck.

I stood, sighing, turned to the bed. Puddin’ Head was snoring on the left-hand side. He had staked his claimed there nearly an hour ago and hadn’t moved. He was taking up way more space than a cat should have needed and was unabashedly blasé about it. I wondered sometimes why I had gotten so attached to that cat. As far as cats went, he had arrogance and entitlement down to an art form. I just shook my head. He didn’t bother acknowledging me but a paw flicked and I wondered if I had just been flipped the cat finger.

I shucked my terrycloth robe and draped it over the chair. I had on an old over-sized T-shirt with a Supergirl symbol across the front—yeah, I know it wasn’t going to help, but anything to feel the least bit empowered, ya know? I usually sleep naked—no complaints from Alry on that when he stays over!—but tonight I felt vulnerable. Things, and I do mean things, were coming and going pretty freely in my apartment, so why give them a free show? Girls who did that in the horror movies usually ended up as stalker meat, so I saw no need to push my luck.

I switched off the light, knowing more than just literally I was in the dark and things might not get the least bit brighter with the morning light.

Little Miss Demonic

Where in the World is Arlo Grimm Part 22: Little Miss Demonic

I caught myself screaming and forced it to stop. It was just an automatic reaction but I was freaking myself out worse than I already was.

I shuddered. Hard. Grabbed myself with both arms and squeezed to stop myself from falling apart.

“Arly…” I whispered, waves of emotion at seeing him now overwhelming me and forcing back some the fear.

I stared at the slider door, because Alry wasn’t just standing on the patio beyond it, he was embedded in the glass itself, his image barely discernable within the rain streaming down the pane. He was semi-transparent and he was kneeling, naked, his wrists manacled to something above and behind him I couldn’t see.

Did I ever tell you what Arly looked like? Although he’s older than me you’d hardly know it. He runs and works out a lot to wear off all those greasy burgers Pete feeds him and the pizza he buys by the truckload. I think that crappy bourbon he puts down preserves him too, but he has a young face, a kind face—when he’s not pissed off—kind of like Lee Majors from that old show where he was a part machine. An older version, but not too much older.

But his face now showed more strain and hopelessness than I had ever seen on it, even with all the stuff that went on with Ficatier and her witches. His cheeks were hollow and his eyes dark, incredibly sad. It wasn’t natural on him. But it was brief. His image faded a second then came back, but weaker, as if it were having trouble remaining. One of his hands reached out, fingers splayed, stopped by the shackle, though I heard no sound of iron clanking.

Chloe…help…me…Saint...Patricia…

I wasn’t certain whether I had really heard his voice or if it had been just in my mind, because some of the words had been missing and rain suddenly roared down, turning the glass to a wavering streaking sheet of reflected light from my living room and darkness from outside.

Then the little girl’s ghostly laugh started again, just as I took a step closer to the window. It rose and fell in a demonic wave, a mocking quality to it, a taunt.

He doesn’t belong to you anymore…he belongs to us…we will use his gift…

That voice I heard distinctly and it was the damn demon girl again. A flash of a thought went through my head. The locket was in my backpack on the dining room table and I wondered if I could get to it. I also wondered if it would really do any good if I could.

The demonic girl’s image coalesced within the glass, her eyes sparkling with anti-light, her face incredibly pale, almost a sickly green, a reflection of every vile emotion I could think of.

“What the hell do you want?” I screamed at her. “Tell me where he is!”

More laughter came from the girl and her lips spread in a spiteful grin. I saw something in her hands then, which were cupped near her waist. She turned her hands over, dumping bones from them, monkey bones.

She can’t help you, either…She was too late six-hundred years ago…you will be too late now…ashes, ashes…

Who the hell was the demon talking about, I wondered. Lansing? Lansing wasn’t six-hundred years old. Granted she was a bit haggard for her age…

“Where is he?” I asked, trying not to piss myself and stand up to the thing.

Another laugh came from the demon girl and nothing about it helped my composure any.

He tried to reach you….he had help, but that won’t happen again…

What did she mean by help? Had Patricia found Arly? Had she tried to help him get a message to me?

The thought was stopped dead because the phone rang and scared the living crap right out of me.

I spun, started at it on the end table. I saw the caller ID flashing and froze. It was no number showing up on the read-out; it was that frickin’ symbol again, the one on the locket.

Forcing myself to move, I ran for the phone and snatched it up.

“Patricia?” I damn near yelled into the mouthpiece.

Ring-a-ring of roses….all fall down…

Children’s voices again, singing the nursery rhyme. My mind started to whirl and I knew I would lose it if I didn’t focus.

“What do you want?” I shouted at the phone and the line suddenly went dead. I slammed the phone down and whirled back to face the slider but the glass appeared normal now. Rain streaked down the pane but no demon girl and no Arly were within the glass.