Practical Demonkeeping (Pine Cove 1)

Chapter 3-4

3

TRAVIS

Travis O'Hearn was driving a fifteen-year-old Chevy Impala he had bought in L. A. with money the demon had taken from a pimp. The demon was standing on the passenger seat with his head out the window, panting into the rushing coastal wind with the slobbering exuberance of an Irish setter. From time to time he pulled his head inside the car, looked at Travis, and sang, "Your mother sucks cocks in he-ell, Your mother sucks cocks in he-ell," in a teasing, childlike way. Then he would spin his head around several times for effect.

They had spent the night in a cheap motel north of San Junipero, and the demon had tuned the television to a cable channel that played an uncut version of The Exorcist. It was the demon's favorite movie. At least, Travis thought, it was better than the last time, when the demon had seen The Wizard of Oz and had spent an entire day pretending to be a flying monkey, or screaming, "And that goes for your little dog, too. "

"Sit still, Catch," Travis said. "I'm trying to drive. "

The demon had been wired since he had eaten the hitchhiker the night before. The guy must have been on cocaine or speed. Why did drugs affect the demon when poisons did not phase him? It was a mystery.

The demon tapped Travis on the shoulder with a long reptilian claw. "I want to ride on the hood," he said. His voice was like rusty nails rattling in a can.

"Enjoy," Travis said, waving across the dashboard.

The demon climbed out the window and across the front, where he perched like a hood ornament from hell, his forked tongue flying in the wind like a storm-swept pennon, spattering the windshield with saliva. Travis turned on the wipers and was grateful to find that the Chevy was equipped with an interval delay feature.

It had taken him a full day in Los Angeles to find a pimp who looked as if he were carrying enough cash to get them a car, and another day for the demon to catch the guy in a place isolated enough to eat him. Travis insisted that the demon eat in private. When he was eating he became visible to other people. He also tripled in size.

Travis had a recurring nightmare about being asked to explain the eating habits of his traveling companion.

In the dream Travis is walking down the street when a policeman taps him on the shoulder.

"Excuse me, sir," the policeman says.

Travis does a slow-mo Sam Peckenpah turn. "Yes," he says.

The policeman says, "I don't mean to bother you  -  but that large, scaly fellow over there munching on the mayor  -  do you know him?" The policeman points toward the demon, who is biting off the head of a man in a pinstriped polyester suit.

"Why, yes, I do," Travis says. "That's Catch, he's a demon. He has to eat someone every couple of days or he gets cranky. I've known him for seventy years. I'll vouch for his lack of character. "

The policeman, who has heard it all before, says, "There's a city ordinance against eating an elected official without a permit. May I see your permit, please?"

"I'm sorry," Travis says, "I don't have a permit, but I'll be glad to get one if you'll tell me where to go. "

The cop sighs and begins writing on a ticket pad. "You can only get a permit from the mayor, and your friend seems to be finishing him off now. We don't like strangers eating our mayor around here. I'm afraid I'll have to cite you. "

Travis protests, "But if I get another ticket, they'll cancel my insurance. " He always wondered about this part of the dream; he'd never carried insurance. The cop ignores him and continues to write out the ticket. Even in a dream, he is only doing his job.

Travis thought it terribly unfair that Catch even invaded his dreams. Sleep, at least, should provide some escape from the demon, who had been with him for seventy years, and would be with him forever unless he could find a way to send him back to hell.

For a man of ninety, Travis was remarkably well preserved. In fact, he did not appear to be much over twenty, his age when he had called up the demon. Dark with dark eyes and lean, Travis had sharp features that would have seemed evil if not for the constant look of confusion he wore, as if there were one answer that would make everything in life clear to him if he could only remember the question.

He had never bargained for the endless days on the road with the demon, trying to figure out how to stop the killing. Sometimes the demon ate daily, sometimes he would go for weeks without killing. Travis had never found a reason, a connection, or a pattern to it. Sometimes he could dissuade the demon from killing, sometimes he could only steer him toward certain victims. When he could, he had the demon eat pimps or pushers, those that humanity could do without. But other times he had to choose vagrants and vagabonds, those that would not be missed.

There was a time when he had cried while sending Catch after a hobo or a bag-lady. He'd made friends among the homeless when he was riding the rails with the demon, back before there were so many automobiles. Often a bum who didn't know where his next roof or drink was coming from had shared a boxcar and a bottle with Travis. And Travis had learned that there was no evil in being poor; poverty merely opened one up to evil. But over the years he had learned to push aside the remorse, and time and again Catch dined on bums.

He wondered what went through the minds of Catch's victims just before they died. He had seen them wave their hands before their eyes as if the monster looming before them was an illusion, a trick of the light. He wondered what would happen now, if oncoming drivers could see Catch perched on the front of the Chevy waving like a parade queen from the Black Lagoon.

They would panic, swerve off the narrow road and over the ocean-side bank. Windshields would shatter, and gasoline would explode, and people would die. Death and the demon were never separated for long. Coming soon to a town near you, Travis thought. But perhaps this is the last one.

As a seagull cry dopplered off to Travis's left, he turned to look out the window over the ocean. The morning sun was reflecting off the face of the waves, illuminating a sparkling halo of spray. For a moment he forgot about Catch and drank in the beauty of the scene, but when he turned to look at the road again, there was the demon, standing on the bumper, reminding him of his responsibility.

Travis pushed the accelerator to the floor and the Impala's engine hesitated, then roared as the automatic transmission dropped into passing gear. When the speedometer hit sixty he locked up the brakes.

Catch hit the roadway face first and skidded headlong, throwing up sparks where his scales scraped the asphalt. He bounced off a signpost and into a ditch, where he lay for a moment trying to gather his thoughts. The Impala fishtailed and came to a stop sideways in the road.

Travis slammed the Chevy into reverse, righted the car, then threw it into drive and screeched toward the demon, keeping the wheels out of the ditch until the moment of impact. The Impala's headlights shattered against Catch's chest. The corner of the bumper caught him in the waist and drove him deep into the mud of the ditch. The engine sputtered to a stop and the damaged radiator hissed a rusty cloud of steam into Catch's face.

The driver's side door was jammed against the ditch, so Travis crawled out the window and ran around the car to see what damage he had done. Catch was lying in the ditch with the bumper against his chest.

"Nice driving, A. J. ," Catch said. "You going to try for Indy next year?"

Travis was disappointed. He hadn't really expected to hurt Catch, he knew from experience that the demon was virtually indestructible, but he had hoped at least to piss him off. "Just trying to keep you on your toes," he said. "A little test to see how you hold up under stress. "

Catch lifted the car, crawled out, and stood next to Travis in the ditch. "What's the verdict? Did I pass?"

"Are you dead?"

"Nope, I feel great. "

"Then you have failed miserably. I'm sorry but I'll have to run you over again. "

"Not with this c

ar," the demon said, shaking his head.

Travis surveyed the steam rising from the radiator and wondered whether he might not have been a little hasty in giving way to his anger. "Can you get it out of the ditch?"

"Piece of cake. " The demon hoisted the front of the car and began to walk it up onto the berm. "But you're not going to get far without a new radiator. "

"Oh, you're all of a sudden an expert mechanic. Mr. help-me-I-can't-change-the-channel-while-the-magic-fingers-is-on all of a sudden has a degree in automotive diagnostics?"

"Well, what do you think?"

"I think there's a town just ahead where we can get it fixed. Didn't you read that sign you bounced off of?" It was a dig. Travis knew the demon couldn't read; in fact, he often watched subtitled movies with the sound off just to irritate Catch.

"What's it say?"

"It says, 'Pine Cove, five miles. ' That's where we're going. I think we can limp the car five miles with a bad radiator. If not, you can push. "

"You run over me and wreck the car and I get to push?"

"Correct," Travis said, crawling back through the car window.

"At your command, master," Catch said sarcastically.

Travis tried the ignition. The car whined and died. "It won't start. Get behind and push. "

"Okay," Catch said. He went around to the back of the car, put his shoulder to the bumper, and began pushing it the rest of the way out of the ditch. "But pushing cars is very hungry work. "

4

ROBERT

Robert Masterson had drunk a gallon of red wine, most of a five-liter Coors minikeg, and a half-pint of tequila, and still the dream came.

A desert. A big, bright, sandy bastard. The Sahara. He is naked, tied to a chair with barbed wire. Before him is a great canopied bed covered in black satin. Under the cool shade of the canopy his wife, Jennifer, is making love to a stranger  -  a young, muscular, dark-haired man. Tears run down Robert's cheeks and crystallize into salt. He cannot close his eyes or turn away. He tries to scream, but every time he opens his mouth a squat, lizardlike monster, the size of a chimpanzee, shoves a saltine cracker into his mouth. The heat and the pain in his chest are agonizing. The lovers are oblivious to his pain. The little reptile man tightens the barbed wire around his chest by twisting a stick. Every time he sobs, the wire cuts deeper. The lovers turn to him in slow motion, maintaining their embrace. They wave to him, a big home-movie wave, postcard smiles. Greetings from the heart of anguish.

Awake, the dream-pain in his chest replaced by a real pain in his head. Light is the enemy. It's out there waiting for you to open your eyes. No. No way.

Thirst  -  brave the light to slake the thirst  -  it must be done.

He opened his eyes to a dim, forgiving light. Must be cloudy out. He looked around. Pillows, full ashtrays, empty wine bottles, a chair, a calendar from the wrong year with a picture of a surfer riding a huge swell, pizza boxes. This wasn't home. He didn't live like this. Humans don't live like this.

He was on someone's couch. Where?

He sat up and waited in vertigo until his brain snapped back into his head, which it did with a vengeful impact. Ah, yes, he knew where he was. This was Hangover  -  Hangover, California. Pine Cove, where he was thrown out of the house by his wife. Heartbreak, California.

Jenny, call Jenny. Tell her that humans don't live this way. No one lives this way. Except The Breeze. He was in The Breeze's trailer.

He looked around for water. There was the kitchen, fourteen miles away, over there at the end of the couch. Water was in the kitchen.

He crawled naked off the couch, across the floor of the kitchen to the sink, and pulled himself up. The faucet was gone, or at least buried under a stack of dirty dishes. He reached into an opening, cautiously searching for the faucet like a diver reaching into an underwater crevice for a moray eel. Plates skidded down the pile and crashed on the floor. He looked at the china shards scattered around his knees and spotted the mirage of a Coors minikeg. He managed a controlled fall toward the mirage and his hand struck the nozzle. It was real. Salvation: hair of the dog in a handy, five-liter disposable package.

He started to drink from the nozzle and instantly filled his mouth, throat, sinuses, aural cavity, and chest hair with foam.

"Use a glass," Jenny would say. "What are you, an animal?" He must call Jenny and apologize as soon as the thirst was gone.

First, a glass. Dirty dishes were strewn across every horizontal surface in the kitchen: the counter, stove, table, breakfast bar, and the top of the refrigerator. The oven was filled with dirty dishes.

Nobody lives like this. He spotted a glass among the miasma. The Holy Grail. He grabbed it and filled it with beer. Mold floated on the settling foam. He threw the glass into the oven and slammed the door before an avalanche could gain momentum.

A clean glass, perhaps. He checked the cupboard where the dishes had once been kept. A single cereal bowl stared out at him. From the bottom of the bowl Fred Flintstone congratulated him, "Good kid! You're a clean-plater!" Robert filled the bowl and sat cross-legged on the floor amid the broken dishes while he drank.

Fred Flintstone congratulated him three times before his thirst abated. Good old Fred. The man's a saint. Saint Fred of Bedrock.

"Fred, how could she do this to me? Nobody can live like this. "