Demon Jack

• Title Page
  
• Chapter 1
  
• Chapter 2
  
• Chapter 3
  
• Chapter 4
  
• Chapter 5
  
• Chapter 6
  
• Chapter 7
  
• Chapter 8
  
• Chapter 9
  
• Chapter 10
  
• Chapter 11
  
• Chapter 12
  
• Chapter 13
  
• Chapter 14
  
• Chapter 15
  
• Chapter 16
  
• Chapter 17
  
• Chapter 18
  
• Chapter 19
  
• Chapter 20
  
• Chapter 21
  
• Chapter 22
  
• Chapter 23
  
• Chapter 24
  
• Chapter 25
  
• Chapter 26
  
• Chapter 27
  
• Chapter 28
  
• Chapter 29
  
• Chapter 30
  
• Chapter 31
  
• Chapter 32
  
• Chapter 33
  
• Chapter 34
  

by

Patrick Donovan

This book is available in print at Amazon.com.

Digital Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook 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 purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any character resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Demon Jack

Book 1

Copyright © 2013 by Patrick Donovan

Published by Fable Press

FablePress.com

Cover by Steven Novak

For Gabriel because you were right, “Poppa Got This”. You're my guy, I love you kiddo.

For Nana because I still remember you sitting at the table with an old, worn paperback and that's really what started all this. We miss you. Rest well.

And For Karen, Without you, Jack probably would have never made it this far. Much love Murph.

Chapter 1

I don’t sleep well.

I wake up even worse.

For that first hour, the world simply will not register in its normal state. Everything is this sort of hazed out, slow motion blur. To make matters worse, I'd spent the previous night and most of the day before in a haze of cheap, gas station wine and had now subsequently found myself the proud owner of a hangover that could quite possibly kill God himself. Now, take that and couple it with the fact that I normally wake up with said hangovers in abandoned buildings, or under freeways overpasses, huddled and shivering beneath rags and cardboard, with the constant rumble of engines overhead and you have the typical start to my day.

I stared bleary-eyed around the most recent of the five-star establishments I was lucky enough to find myself in, still trying to shake off the after effects of my most recent bender. It was a vast expanse of old factory, mostly empty, except for a few old, stained mattresses tossed here and there. The walls and concrete floor still held the markings of the fire that had gutted it years ago. There were a few other squatters huddled around barrel fires, eating scraps of hoarded food, shooting up, or drinking booze from bottles wrapped in brown bags.

Whatever it was they were doing, one thing was fact. They kept on surviving. Street people are tough in that regard. When I died, I had to literally sell my soul to stay out of Hell and keep breathing. The people here, they gave Death the finger on a daily basis. They kept scratching and clawing at life, getting by on any means necessary, not just because they could, but because they had to. The majority of them didn’t have any other options except to keep on keeping on.

I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt up over my head, mostly hiding the hundreds of scars that were carved into my face. They trailed down my body in perfect symmetry covering my throat, my neck, chest, stomach, back and arms. Each scar was a symbol, a word written in infernal script, and carved into my skin by a demon named Alice. Most people on the street thought they were some kind of gang initiation, or something that I had gotten after crossing the wrong person when I was in prison.

God, don’t I wish
that
was the fucking case.

“You look like shit, Jack.”

“Nice to see you too, Essie,” I said, lifting a hand in greeting.

In another life, Essie may have been someone’s kindly family matriarch, surrounded by grandkids and passing her golden years away in relative comfort. Instead fate had cast her in the role of just another of the hundreds of tough old birds that had to keep fighting tooth and nail against cold, against hunger, against everything the streets of Boston could throw at her. More often than not, she made it look damn near easy. She had been one of the first people I had met after getting out of prison and she’d taken me under her wing when I started living on the streets. At the time, I had considered it a more viable and appealing option than the life I had left behind, which is probably saying a lot about my former career choices.

She was dressed for the weather, her tiny, hunched frame bundled in a pair of cast off blue jeans a few inches too short over a pair of stained sweat pants. She had a coat that very well may have been more patch work and duct tape than actual fabric. It had to be at least two sizes too big. She wore it belted around her waist with a length of rope, the zipper long since gone. Her hair was the color of worn steel, tied back in a tight frizzy braid.

She smiled, a wide grin full of rotten and broken teeth that vaguely resembled a jack-o-lantern. With a creak of tired joints and a wincing sigh she took a seat on the floor next to me. Stale cigarettes and cheap booze rolled off her like some kind of special hobo perfume. The moonlight, leaking through various holes in the wall, gave her face a pale, almost glowing pallor. It made her look damned near ghastly, truth be told.

She winked at me and shrugged an old backpack off her shoulder, settling it at her feet.

“Brought you a present Jack-Jack,” she said.

“Please tell me it’s a cigarette,” I groaned, a wave of hangover induced pain and nausea sweeping through me.

Essie reached into her coat and produced not just a cigarette, but a whole unopened pack of cancer inducing perfection.

“I could kiss you right now,” I said, packing the cigarettes against the palm of my hand.

“Well pucker up then, big boy.”

I tapped one of the smokes out.

“Light?” I asked.

“You want me to kick you in the ass, jump start your lungs for you too? Maybe file you as a dependent on my taxes?” she asked, tossing me a book of matches.

I lit the cigarette and took a long drag. They were cheap and harsh, the smoke burning my throat dry as it went down. It was damn near orgasmic.

“You’re the best,” I said.

“I know.”

God only knew where Essie pulled together half the things she managed to come across. Smokes, food, booze - if she didn’t have it when you needed it, she’d get it in short order. It wasn’t uncommon for her, if you were sick, to just show up smiling that broken grin and throw a bottle of cough syrup or Tylenol in your lap. The best part, she’d never ask for anything in return outside of a little conversation. A lot of people looked at her as a sort of mother figure amongst the street folk.

“You haven’t seen the best part of the stash yet. We hit the gravy train.”

“Unless you have a hooker hiding in that bag, I’m not really seeing how things can get too much better,” I said.

“Such high standards you have.”

“I’m a man of refined tastes,” I said.

“So I’ve noticed.”

Essie dug into the backpack. She tossed aside a few crumpled sheets of yellowed newspaper and an old steel can she used for cooking. For a second, I thought she was just going to crawl inside of it, close it behind her and vanish or end up with just her feet kicking back and forth out of the opening, like some sort of half crazed Christmas elf digging through Santa’s bag.

Then the smell hit me. Grilled onions and green peppers. A touch of garlic. Steak, still warm and lathered in grease and cheese. Somehow, she had gotten her hands on an honest to God, still hot, Philly Cheesesteak. The myriad of smells, the sight of the butcher’s paper stained with gray spots of grease as she pulled it from the confines of the bag, set my mouth to watering. I was pretty sure the sound that came out of my mouth at the sight of it was more than just vaguely sexual.

And I was pretty sure that what came out of my mouth when she set the two cans of Pepsi on the floor between us, crossed the line from vaguely sexual and went straight into obscene.

“Stole the sandwich from some delivery guy’s car while he took an order up to an apartment. Got the soda’s from one of them hot dog vendors while he was chatting up a pretty girl.” She explained.

She handed me a can and unwrapped the sandwich, tearing it into halves and passing me the bigger one.

“Essie. I’m gonna dance at your wedding,” I said, finishing off the cigarette and taking my half of the bounty.

“Darlin’, marriage is what got me living in this palatial estate, if ya get me,” she said, taking a bite from her half of the sandwich. “’Sides, I don’t think I’ve seen you eat in a day or two, you know, being fall down drunk and all. Thought you could use it,” she said around a mouthful of food, a thin line of grease running down her chin.

For a long moment, I stared at the sandwich in my hands. It was heaven, nirvana and Shangri-la all wrapped up in two slices of soggy bread, dripping with melted cheese and mayo.

The first bite nearly sent me into some sort of intoxicated sensory overload. I completely forgot my hangover and tore into the sandwich.

When we finished, Essie settled back watching the interior of the building with distant, thoughtful eyes. She had a cigarette perched between her lips, the smoke curling around her mouth like tiny serpents.

“Gonna be a cold winter,” she said finally.

“Essie. It’s Boston. Every winter is cold,” I said, wiping grease off my mouth with the back of my hand.

“I ‘spose so, good lord willing this’n won’t be the death of me.”

“Spring chicken like you?” I asked, smiling.

“Bah! The Good Lord ain’t got no use for an old bird like me,” she said. “’Sides. I know things.”

She gave me a conspiratory wink, tapping her index finger to her temple between puffs off her coffin nail.

“Is that right?”

“That’s right.”

I settled back, trying to find a more comfortable position against the wall. Essie had had seizures for as long as I knew her - a symptom of her chronic alcoholism. She had gotten sober last summer, but the seizures were going to plague her for the rest of her life. Her “fits” as she called them, were a constant reminder of a long and painful past that she’d never be able to outrun. It was a history that, in the end, would probably be the death of her.

She also claimed the fits gave her a direct line to God and that The Almighty sent her visions of the future.

“Don’t happen to know the winning lotto numbers do you?” I asked.

“If I did, we’d be sitting on a beach somewhere and I’d be drinking little fruity drinks outta coconuts while you fanned me with a banana leaf.”

“Is that right? I’d be fanning you?”

“Gospel truth,” she said. “And you’d be damn happy to do it.”