Practical Demonkeeping pc-1 Read online

  The farmer’s story touched off an entrepreneurial spark in the surfer, and after the meeting The Breeze cornered Homer with a proposition.

  “Homer, how would you like to make some heavy bread growing magic mushrooms?”

  The next day the farmer and the surfer were hauling bags of manure into the caves, spreading it over the peat, and scattering a completely different type of spore.

  According to The Breeze their crop would sell for ten to twenty dollars an ounce instead of the fifty cents a pound that Homer received for his last crop. Homer was enraptured with the possibility of becoming rich. And he would have, if not for the bats.

  As the day of their first harvest neared, The Breeze had to take his leave of their plantation to serve the weekend in the county jail (the first of fifty — the judge had not been amused at having barf-covered police shoes presented as evidence in his courtroom). Before he left, The Breeze assured Homer that he would return Monday to help with the drying and marketing of the mushrooms.

  In the meantime, the woman who had been bitten during the debacle of the bats, came down with rabies. County animal-control agents were ordered to the caves to destroy the bat colony. When the agents arrived, they found Homer Styles crouched over a tray of psychedelic mushrooms.

  The agents offered Homer the option of walking away and leaving the mushrooms, but Homer refused, so they radioed the sheriff. Homer was led away in handcuffs, the animal-control agents left with their pockets filled with mushrooms, and the bats were left alone.

  When The Breeze was released on Monday, he found himself in search of a new scam.

  A few months later, while incarcerated at the state prison in Lompoc, Homer Styles received a letter from The Breeze. The letter was covered with a fine yellow powder and read: “Sorry about your bust. Hope we can bury the hatchet.”

  Homer buried the letter in a shoe box he kept under his bunk and spent the next ten years living in relative luxury on the profits he made from selling psychedelic mushrooms to the other inmates. Homer sampled his crop only once, then swore off mushrooms for life when he hallucinated that he was drowning in a sea of bats.

  35

  BAD GUYS, GOOD GUYS

  Rachel was drawing figures in the dirt of the cave floor with a dagger when she heard something flutter by her ear.

  “What was that?”

  “A bat,” Catch said. He was invisible.

  “We are out of here,” Rachel said. “Take them outside.”

  Effrom, Amanda, and Jenny were sitting with their backs against the cave wall, tied hand and foot, and gagged.

  “I don’t know why we couldn’t have waited at your cabin,” Catch said.

  “I have my reasons. Help me get them outside, now.”

  “You’re afraid of bats?” Catch asked.

  “No, I just feel that this ritual should take place in the open,” Rachel insisted.

  “If you have a problem with bats, you’re going to love it when you see me.”

  -=*=-

  A quarter mile down the road from the cave, Augustus Brine, Travis, and Gian Hen Gian were waiting for Howard and Robert to arrive.

  “Do you think we can pull this off?” Travis asked Brine.

  “Why ask me? I know less about this than the two of you. Whether we pull it off depends mostly on your powers of persuasion.”

  “Can we go over it again?”

  Brine checked his watch. “Let’s wait for Robert and Howard. We still have a few minutes. And I don’t think that it will hurt to be a little late. As far as Catch and Rachel are concerned, you are the only game in town.”

  Just then they heard a car down-shifting and turned to see Howard’s old black Jag turning onto the dirt road. Howard parked behind Brine’s truck. He and Robert got out and Robert reached into the backseat and began handing things to Brine and Travis: a camera bag, a heavy-duty tripod, a long aluminum lens case, and finally, a hunting rifle with a scope. Brine did not take the rifle from Robert.

  “What’s that for?”

  Robert stood up, rifle in hand. “If it looks like it isn’t going to work, we use it to take out Rachel before she gets power over Catch.”

  “What will that accomplish?” Brine asked.

  “It will keep Travis in control of the demon.”

  “No,” Travis said. “One way or another it ends here, but we don’t shoot anyone. We’re here to end the killing, not add to it. Who’s to say that Rachel won’t have more control over Catch than I do?”

  “But she doesn’t know what she is getting into. You said that yourself.”

  “If she gets power over Catch, he has to tell her, just like he told me. At least I will be free of him.”

  “And Jenny will be dead,” Robert spat.

  Augustus Brine said, “The rifle stays in the car. We are going to do this on the assumption that it will work, period. Normally I’d say that if anyone wants out, they can go now, but the fact is, we all have to be here for it to work.”

  Brine looked around the group. They were waiting. “Well, are we going to do this?”

  Robert threw the rifle into the backseat of the car. “Let’s do it, then.”

  “Good,” Brine said. “Travis, you have to get them out of the cave and into the open. You have to hold the invocation up long enough for Robert to get a picture, and you have to get the candlesticks back to us, preferably by sending them down the hill with Jenny and the Elliotts.”

  “They’ll never go for that. Without the hostages, why should I translate the invocation?”

  “Then hold it as a condition. Play it the best you can. Maybe you can get one of them down.”

  “If I make the candlesticks a condition, they’ll be suspicious.”

  “Shit,” Robert said. “This isn’t going to work. I don’t know why I thought it would.”

  Through the whole discussion the Djinn had remained in the background. Now he stepped into the circle. “Give them what they want. Once the woman has control of Catch, they will have no need to be suspicious.”

  “But Catch will kill the hostages, and probably all of us,” Travis said.

  “Wait a minute,” Robert said. “Where is Rachel’s van?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Brine said.

  “Well, they didn’t walk here with hostages in tow. And the van isn’t parked here. That means that her van must be up by the cave.”

  “So?” Travis said.

  “So, it means that if we have to storm them, we can go in Gus’s truck. The road must come out of the woods and loop around the hill to the caves. We already have the recorder, so the invocation can be played back fast. Gus can drive up the hill, Travis can throw the candlesticks into the truck, and all Gus has to do is hit the play button.”

  They considered it for a moment, then Brine said, “Everyone in the bed of the truck. We park it in the woods as close to the caves as we can without it being seen. It’s the closest thing to a plan that we have.”

  -=*=-

  On the grassy hill outside the cave Rachel said, “He’s late.”

  “Let’s kill one of them,” the demon said.

  Jenny and her grandparents sat on the ground, back to back.

  “Once this ritual is over, I won’t have you talking like that,” Rachel said.

  “Yes, mistress, I yearn for your guidance.”

  Rachel paced the hill, making an effort not to look at her hostages. “What if Travis doesn’t come?”

  “He’ll come,” Catch said.

  “I think I hear a car.” Rachel watched the point where the road emerged from the woods. When nothing came, she said, “What if you’re wrong? What if he doesn’t come?”

  “There he is,” Catch said.

  Rachel turned to see Travis walking out of the woods and up the gentle slope toward them.

  -=*=-

  Robert screwed the tripod into the socket of the telephoto lens, tested its steadiness, then fitted the camera body on the back of the lens a
nd turned it until it clicked into place. From the camera bag at his feet he took a pack of Polaroid film and snapped it into the bottom of the Nikon’s back.

  “I’ve never seen a camera like that,” said Augustus Brine.

  Robert was focusing the long lens. “The camera’s a regular thirty-five millimeter. I bought the Polaroid back for it to preview results in the studio. I never got around to using it.”

  Howard Phillips stood poised with notebook in hand and a fountain pen at ready.

  “Check the batteries in that recorder,” Robert said to Brine. “There are some fresh ones in my camera bag if you need them.”

  Gian Hen Gian was craning his neck to see over the undergrowth into the clearing where Travis stood. “What is happening? I cannot see what is happening.”

  “Nothing yet,” Brine said. “Are you set, Robert?”

  “I’m ready,” Robert said without looking up from the camera. “I’m filling the frame with Rachel’s face. The parchment should be easily readable. Are you ready, Howard?”

  “Short of the unlikely possibility that I may be stricken with writer’s cramp at the crucial moment, I am prepared.”

  Brine snapped four penlight batteries into the recorder and tested the mechanism. “It’s up to Travis now,” he said.

  -=*=-

  Travis topped halfway up the hill. “Okay, I’m here. Let them go and I’ll translate the invocation for you.”

  “I don’t think so,” Rachel said. “Once the ritual has been performed and I’m sure it has worked, then you can all go free.”

  “You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Catch will kill us all.”

  “I don’t believe you. The Earth spirit will be in my control, and I won’t allow it.”

  Travis laughed sarcastically. “You haven’t even seen him, have you? What do you think you have there, the Easter Bunny? He kills people. That’s the reason he’s here.”

  “I still don’t believe you.” Rachel was beginning to lose her resolve.

  Travis watched Catch move to where the hostages were tied. “Come, do it now, Travis, or the old woman dies.” He raised a clawed hand over Amanda’s head.

  Travis trudged up the hill and stood in front of Rachel. Very quietly her said to her, “You know, you deserve what you are going to get. I never thought I could wish Catch on anyone, but you deserve it.” He looked at Jenny, and her eyes pleaded for an explanation. He looked away. “Give me the invocation,” he said to Rachel. “I hope you brought a pencil and paper. I can’t do this from memory.”

  Rachel reached into an airline bag that she had brought and pulled out the candlesticks. One at a time she unscrewed them and removed the invocations, then replaced the pieces in the airline bag. She handed Travis the parchments.

  “Put the candlesticks over by Jenny,” he said.

  “Why?” Rachel asked.

  “Because the ritual won’t work if they are too close to the parchments. In fact, you’d be better off if you untied them and sent them away with the candlesticks. Get them out of the area altogether.” The lie seemed so obvious that Travis feared he had ruined everything by putting too much importance on the candlesticks.

  Rachel stared at him, trying to make sense of it. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Neither do I,” Travis said. “But this is mystical stuff. You can’t tell me that taking hostages so you can call up a demon is consistent with the logical world.”

  “Earth spirit! Not demon. And I will use this power for good.”

  Travis considered trying to convince her of her folly, then decided against it. The lives of Jenny and the Elliotts depended on Catch maintaining his charade as a benevolent Earth spirit until it was too late. He glared at the demon, who grinned back.

  “Well?” Travis said.

  Rachel picked up the airline bag and took it to a spot a few feet down the hill from the hostages.

  “No. Farther away,” Travis said.

  She slung the bag over her shoulder and took it another twenty yards down the hill, then turned to Travis for approval.

  “What is this about?” Catch asked.

  Travis, afraid to push his luck, nodded to Rachel and she set the bag down. Now the candlesticks were twenty yards closer to the road that ran around the back of the hill — the road that Augustus Brine would drive when the shit hit the fan.

  Rachel returned to the hilltop.

  “I’ll need that pencil and paper now,” he said.

  “It’s in the bag.” Rachel went back toward the bag.

  While she was retrieving the pencil and paper from the airline bag, Travis held the parchments out before him, one at a time, counting to six before he put the first one down and picked up the next. He hoped he had the angle to Robert’s camera right and that his body was not in the way of the lens.

  “Here.” Rachel handed him a pencil and a steno pad.

  Travis sat down cross-legged with the parchments out in front of him. “Sit down and relax, this is going to take some time.”

  He started on the parchment from the second candlestick, hoping to buy some time. He translated the Greek letter by letter, searching his memory first for each letter, then for the meaning of the words. By the time he finished the first line, he had fallen into a rhythm and had to make an effort to slow down.

  “Read what he has written,” Catch said.

  “But he’s just done one line-” Rachel said.

  “Read it.”

  Rachel took the steno pad from Travis and read, “Being in possession of the Power of Solomon I call upon the race that walked before man…” She stopped. “That’s all there is.”

  “It’s the wrong paper,” Catch said. “Travis, translate the other one. If it’s not right this time, the girl dies.”

  “That’s the last time I buy you a Cookie Monster comic book, you scaly fucker.”

  Reluctantly Travis shuffled the parchments and began to translate the invocation he had spoken in Saint Anthony’s chapel seventy years before.

  -=*=-

  Howard Phillips had two Polaroid prints out on the ground before him. He was writing a translation out on a notepad while Augustus Brine and Gian Hen Gian looked over his shoulder. Robert was looking through the camera.

  “They’ve made him change parchments. He must have been translating the wrong one.”

  Brine said, “Howard, are you translating the one we need?”

  “I am not sure yet. I’ve only translated a few lines of the Greek. This Latin passage at the top appears to be a message rather than an invocation.”

  “Can’t you just scan it? We don’t have time for mistakes.”

  Howard read what he had written. “No, this is wrong.” He tore the sheet from the notepad and began again, concentrating on the other Polaroid. “This one seems to have two shorter invocations. The first one seems to be the one that empowers the Djinn. It talks about a race that walked before man.”

  “That is right. Translate the one with two invocations,” the Djinn said.

  “Hurry,” Robert said, “Travis has half a page. Gus, I’m going to ride up the hill in the bed of the truck when you go. I’ll jump out and grab the bag with the candlesticks. They’re still a good thirty yards from the road and I can move faster than you can.”

  “I’m finished,” Howard said. He handed his notebook to Brine.

  “Record it at normal speed,” Robert said. “Then play it back at high speed.”

  Brine held the recorder up to his face, his finger on the record button. “Gian Hen Gian, is this going to work? I mean is a voice on a tape going to have the same effect as speaking the words?”

  “It would be best to assume that it will.”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Swell,” Brine said. He pushed the record button and read Howard’s translation into the recorder. When he finished, he rewound the tape and said, “Okay, let’s go.”

  “Police!
Don’t anyone move!”

  They turned to see Rivera standing in the road behind them, his.38 in hand, panning back and forth to cover them. “Everybody down on the ground, facedown.”

  They stood frozen in position.

  “On the ground, now!” Rivera cocked his revolver.

  “Officer, there must be a mistake,” Brine said, feeling stupid as he said it.

  “Down!”

  Reluctantly, Brine, Robert, and Howard lay facedown on the ground. Gian Hen Gian remained standing, cursing in Arabic. Rivera’s eyes widened as blue swirls appeared in the air over the Djinn’s head.

  “Stop that,” Rivera said.

  The Djinn ignored him and continued cursing.

  “On your belly, you little fucker.”

  Robert pushed himself up on his arms and looked around. “What’s this about, Rivera? We were just out here taking some pictures.”

  “Yeah, and that’s why you have a high-powered rifle in your car.”

  “That’s nothing,” Robert said.

  “I don’t know what it is, but it’s more than nothing. And none of you are going anywhere until I get some answers.”

  “You’re making a mistake, Officer,” Brine said. “If we don’t continue with what we were doing, people are going to die.”

  “First, it’s Sergeant. Second, I’m getting to be a master at making mistakes, so one more is no big deal. And third, the only person who is going to die is this little Arab if he doesn’t get his ass on the ground.”

  -=*=-

  What was taking them so long? Travis had dragged the translation out as long as he could, stalling on a word here and there, but he could tell that Catch was getting impatient and to delay any long would endanger Jenny.

  He tore two sheets from the steno pad and handed them to Rachel. “It’s finished, now you can untie them.” He gestured to Jenny and the Elliotts.

  “No,” Catch said. “First we see if it works.”