Practical Demonkeeping (20 page)

During the drive to Pine Cove, Rivera was nagged by the idea that he had forgotten something. It wasn't that he hadn't reported where he was going; he had planned that. Until he had physical evidence that there was a serial killer in the area, he wasn't saying a word. But when he knocked on the Elliotts' front door and it swung open, he suddenly remembered that his bullet-proof vest was hanging in his locker back at the station.

He called into the house and waited for an answer. None came.

Only cops and vampires have to have an invitation to enter, he thought. But there is probable cause. The part of his mind that functioned like a district attorney kicked in.

“
So, Sergeant Rivera,” the lawyer said, “you entered a private residence based on a computer data base that could have been no more than a mailing list
?”

“
I believed that Effrom Elliott's name on the list represented a clear and present danger to a private citizen, so I entered the residence
.”

Rivera drew his revolver and held it in his right hand while he held his badge out in his left.

“Mr. and Mrs. Elliott, this is Sergeant Rivera from the Sheriff's Department. I'm coming in the house.”

He moved from room to room announcing his presence before he entered. The bedroom door was closed. He saw the splintered bullet hole in the door and felt his adrenaline surge.

Should he call for backup?

The D.A. said: “And so you entered the house on what basis
?”

Rivera came through the door low and rolled. He lay for a moment on the floor of the empty room, feeling stupid.

What now? He couldn't call in and report a bullet hole in a residence that he had probably entered illegally, especially when he hadn't reported that he was in Pine Cove in the first place.

One step at a time, he told himself.

Rivera returned to his unmarked car and reported that he was in Pine Cove.

“Sergeant Rivera,” the dispatcher said, “there is a message for you from Technical Sergeant Nailsworth. He said to tell you that Robert Masterson is married to the granddaughter of Effrom Elliott. He said he doesn't know what it means, but he thought you should know.”

It meant that he had to find Robert Masterson. He acknowledged the message and signed off.

Fifteen minutes later he was at The Breeze's trailer. The old pickup was gone and no one answered the door. He radioed the station and requested a direct patch to the Spider.

“Nailgun, can you get me Masterson's wife's home address? He gave the trailer as residence when we brought him in. And give me the place where she works.”

“Hold on, it'll be just a second for her address.” Rivera lit a cigarette while he waited. Before he took the second drag, Nailsworth came back with the address and the shortest route from Rivera's location.

“It will take a little longer for the employer. I have to access the Social Security files.”

“How long?”

“Five, maybe ten minutes.”

“I'm on my way to the house. Maybe I won't need it.”

“Rivera, there was a fire call at that address this morning. That mean anything to you?”

“Nothing means anything to me anymore, Nailsworth.”

Five minutes later Rivera pulled up in front of Jenny's house. Everything was covered with a gummy gray goo, a mix of ashes, flour, and water from the fire hoses. As Rivera climbed out of the car, Nailsworth called back.

“Jennifer Masterson is currently employed at H.P.'s Cafe, off Cypress in Pine Cove. You want the phone number?”

“No,” Rivera said. “If she's not here, I'll go over there. It's just a few doors down from my next stop.”

“You need anything else?” Nailsworth sounded as if he was holding something back.

“No,” Rivera said. “I'll call if I do.”

“Rivera, don't forget about that other matter.”

“What matter?”

“Roxanne. Check on her for me.”

“As soon as I can, Nailsworth.”

Rivera threw the radio mike onto the passenger seat. As he walked up to the house, he heard someone come on the radio singing a chorus to the song “Roxanne” in a horrible falsetto. Nailsworth had shown his weakness over an open frequency, and now, Rivera knew, the whole department would ride the fat man's humiliation into the ground.

When this was over, Rivera promised himself, he would concoct a story to vindicate the Spider's pride. He owed him that. Of course, that depended on Rivera vindicating himself.

The walk to the door covered his shoes with gray goo. He waited for an answer and returned to the car, cursing in Spanish, his shoes converted to dough balls.

He didn't get out of the car at H.P.'s Cafe. It was obvious from the darkened windows that no one was inside. His last chance was the Head of the Slug Saloon. If Masterson wasn't there, he was out
of leads, and he would have to report what he knew, or, what was more embarrassing, what he didn't know, to the captain.

Rivera found a parking place in front of the Slug behind Robert's truck, and after taking a few minutes to get his right shoe unstuck from the gas pedal, he went in.

The Pagan Vegetarians for Peace called them the Sacred Caves because they believed that the caves had once been used by Ohlone Indians for religious ceremonies. This, in fact, was not true, for the Ohlone had avoided the caves as much as possible due to the huge population of bats that lived there, bats that were inextricably locked into the destiny of the caves.

The first human occupation of the caves came in the 1960s, when a down-and-out farmer named Homer Styles decided to use the damp interior of the caves to cultivate mushrooms. Homer started his business with five hundred wooden crates of the sort used for carting soda bottles, and a half-gallon carton of mail-order mushroom spores; total investment: sixteen dollars. Homer had stolen the crates from behind the Thrifty-Mart, a few at a time, over the period of weeks that it took him to read the pamphlet
Fungus for Fun and Profit
, put out by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

After filling the crates with moist peat and laying them out on
the cave floor, Homer spread his spores and waited for the money to roll in. What Homer didn't figure on was the rapid growth rate of the mushrooms (he'd skipped that part of the pamphlet), and within days he found himself sitting in a cave full of mushrooms with no market and no money to pay for help in harvesting.

The solution to Homer's problem came from another government pamphlet entitled
The Consumer-Harvested Farm
, which had come, by mistake, in the same envelope with
Fungus for Fun
. Homer took his last ten dollars and placed an ad in the local paper:
Mushrooms, $.50 lb. U-PICK-EM, your container. Old Creek Road. 9-5 daily
.

 

Mushroom-hungry Pine Covers came in droves. As fast as the mushrooms were harvested, they grew back, and the money rolled in.

Homer spent his first profits on a generator and a string of lights for the caves, figuring that by extending his business hours into the evening, his profits would grow in proportion. It would have been a sound business move had the bats not decided to rear their furry heads in protest.

During the day the bats had been content to hang out on the roof of the cave while Homer ran his business below. But on the first night of Homer's extended hours when the bats woke to find their home invaded by harshly lit mushroom pickers, their tolerance ended.

There were twenty customers in the caves when the lights went on. In an instant the air above them was a maelstrom of screeching, furry, flying rodents. In the rush to exit, one woman fell and broke a hip and another was bitten on the hand while extracting a bat from her hair. The cloud of bats soon disappeared into the night, only to be replaced the next day by an equally dense cloud of landbound vermin: personal-injury lawyers.

The varmints prevailed in court. Homer's business was destroyed, and once again the bats slept in peace.

A depressed Homer Styles went on a binge in the Head of the Slug. He spent four days in an Irish whiskey haze before his money ran out and Mavis Sand sent him to an Alcoholics Anonymous
meeting. (Mavis could tell when a man had hit bottom, and she felt no need to pump a dry well.)

Homer found himself in the meeting room of the First National Bank, telling his story. It happened that at that same meeting a young surfer who called himself The Breeze was working off a court-ordered sentence he had earned by drunkenly crashing a '62 Volkswagen into a police cruiser and promptly puking on the arresting officer's shoes.

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.

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 and 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!”