The Exorcee

Chapter Five

As I mentioned earlier, luck tends to play a fairly large part in my investigations. I would be more inclined to call it Grace or Providence but for the fact that the luckier I get at tracking demons, the more time I get to spend face to face with demons. (Thanks, Lord. No really, thanks a lot.) It took me barely two hours to find Norman Grey the first time around, and a good deal of the credit goes to fortune or fate or whatever you like to call it; but even fate needs room to work, and it’s our job to create that room by clearing away irrelevancies. In the present case, that meant eliminating reports of meth-heads and psychopaths from my vigilant surveillance of the airwaves.

Furnishings were sparse at Pemberley. A mini-fridge full of crappy food, with a microwave on top. A TV with no channels, an old DVD player, a stack of kung-fu movies I couldn’t stand to watch anymore because I’d learned to perceive all the martial mistakes the “experts” kept making. A scattering of books. Some weights. Alyra’s old escrima sticks (one of them still stained with blood). A table, a couple of chairs, a bed. The plaque from my big brother Connor, hanging on the wall: “Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for battle and my fingers for war (Psalm 143:1).” And, of course, my trusty police scanner. It was to the latter that I turned on that fateful Wednesday, Odin’s Day, sending out my cogitations like the old god’s ravens, Huginn and Muninn—Thought and Memory—to roam the trackless ether till they touched my snarling quarry once again.

Well, actually—that Wednesday wasn’t particularly fateful. I gathered news of some robberies, a car crash, an astonishing number of naked people outdoors in December, and a drug bust for a big finale near midnight. But no sign of Grey. Just as well, considering I was a mass of bruises and traumatized limbs. I hobbled around the apartment that day, hissed through the curtains at the sun, ordered Chinese food, and smeared myself with Zheng-gu-shui muscle ointment; the rest of the time I spent listening to Evanescence and my scanner, and shotgunning Jolt and ibuprofen. I wouldn’t say, necessarily, that I was afraid to go back to sleep—but I wasn’t in a huge rush, either. I nodded off sometime after 3 in the morning and came awake with a start around noon on Thursday. That was when the fatefulness began.

“Suspect is northbound on foot,” said the calm, bloodless voice of the dispatcher. I swear someone must put opiates in their water. “Officer down—proceed with caution. Suspect is unarmed but considered extremely dangerous.” I sat up to fiddle with the volume. Still sore as hell, but edging back into functional territory. “Unit 54 is in pursuit. Back-up requested. Suspect is confirmed as one Norman Grey, wanted for vandalism, assault, breaking and entering, and resisting arrest. Proceed with extreme caution.”

“Where?” I muttered. “Where, where, where? Gimme a street, you soulless machine.” Not that I had a plan, mind you. But I’ve always done my best work at the last possible second. ’Matter of fact, that’s how I do pretty much all my work. “Come on, gimme a street!”

The dispatched finally got a little excited. “Suspect entering vehicle. Repeat, the suspect is entering a vehicle on the corner of Charles and Beacon.”

“A what? What the hell’d he do, flag a demon cab?”

“Vehicle is a tan, late-model Subaru with Vermont plates. Plate number—plate number is four, Baker, three—stand by—stand by—”

“Aw come on, are you serious? These things don’t do technology. How is it driving? How is it out-driving the BPD, for pity’s sake?”

“Unit 54 has visual. . . Unit. . .” There was one of those awful pauses that inevitably precede the confession of failure and shame. “Unit 54 has lost visual. Suspect last seen heading east. Repeat, suspect last seen—”

I turned it off. “Balls.”

My candles had all burned down, and the room was dim. Glancing around, I realized it was midday and my curtains were currently open, but there was no sunlight to speak of. I got up slowly, wincing a bit, and peregrinated toward the nearest window; but there was literally nothing to see. A deep white fog lay over the earth, as if Boston had been lifted into the clouds—or as if the clouds had fallen from the sky.

“Huh.” Fog helped to explain the cops losing sight of Grey’s getaway ride. Question was, how did a twisted semi-rational creature of pure malice wrap its ugly incorporeal head around the automotive concept in the first place? I’d never even heard of one of the Possessed using complex machinery. “Unless it wasn’t driving. Unless—” I stopped. Charles and Beacon, eh? Nice part of town. Always worth a visit.

One stretching session, shower, and perfunctory breakfast later, Dave and I were back on the streets, heading for the trendy neighborhoods. As I drove through Beacon Hill, I kept my eyes open for security cameras that might have caught my erstwhile adversary and his demon cab. And before I even had time to start evolving a stratagem that would get me access to CCTV’s unsleeping Panopticon, I was blind-sided once more by luck or fate or—if you’re into Old English—wyrd. Although it wasn’t that weird (heh) that I’d bump into a cop I happened to know around here. Right on the corner of Charles, lounging in a cruiser with the obligatory Styrofoam cup in hand, was good old Bobby McCloskey, a middle-aged beat-walker with a bit of a paunch but arms like a blacksmith. He hadn’t shaved, and his expression was dour. I parked nearby and approached along his line of sight so I couldn’t possibly startle him.

His face lightened when he noticed me—that is to say, his eyebrows unclenched a little, but for him that was like a yelp of pure bliss. “’Ey Belmont, shoulda ’specteda seeya here.”

“Heya, Bobby. How goes the struggle?”

“Eh, same’s ever. Heard about this Grey guy, didja?” Bobby knew I held some unspecified diocesan position that involved my occasionally sticking my nose into things that weren’t my affair. But while not a church-goer himself, he respected Fr. Joe’s reputation; and more to the point, I’d unofficially helped his precinct find a certain fugitive the year before. That fellow, the now-infamous Mordecai Wolver, turned to be merely crazy, which meant that I quietly disappeared after the hunt, expecting no thanks or recognition—which, ironically, garnered me both.

“Yeah, looks like he busted up a couple of churches around town.”

Bobby nodded, and the dourness crept back into his mein. “Bum. People, I dunno.”

“You guys checking security cameras?”

“No warrant but yeah, Becca’s askin’ around.” Officer Becca Glaive, if I recalled correctly, was Bobby’s partner, a much more outgoing sort and altogether likelier to inspire the voluntary surrender of security footage. No wonder he was waiting in the car. “Gotta get what we can now, ’case the feds get into it.”

I frowned. “They’re gonna call it a hate crime?”

“Might.”

“Huh. Bobby, tell me something. The getaway car—Grey wasn’t the driver, was he?”

He looked surprised. “Naw, pulled up and he jumped in. Javier and Tomlinson were right behind him on foot, but they couldn’t get the license on accounta the damn fog. Just got that weirdo symbol on the trunk.”

I let a beat go by in silence. Then I said, very casually, “Symbol?”

“Yup, some kinda face with a cat and a frog next to it, they said.” He peered at me. “Mean somethin’ to you?”

Busted. I couldn’t just lie to him. “It sounds like a cult I’ve run across before, but I’ll have to talk with the monsignor before I pursue it. If you want, I can give you a call if I find anything solid.”

“Do that. And watch your back out there, huh?”

“Always. Good to see you, Bobby.” We shook hands and I headed back to my car.

Well, well, well. The GOB. I fired up the engine and headed for home. If the universe kept throwing leads at me like this, I’d either enjoy an early retirement or end up as a young and attractive corpse (apart from the grisly mutilations that would no doubt accompany my demise). It was a win/win scenario all the way around!

Back at Pemberley, I called up the padre and got his voicemail. “Father, it’s me. I got a lead on Grey—looks like he was picked up by the Grace of Baal. Car had Vermont plates, which fits; scuttlebutt is, their only two enclaves in the Northeast are in NYC and Burlington. It’s only like, what, quarter of two right now; think I’m gonna mosey on up to B-town and poke around a little. If I don’t check in by tomorrow night, say nice things at my Requiem Mass.”

No telling how long I’d be gone, so I packed a week’s worth of clothes. (’Course, in practice that really just means a week’s worth of socks; everything else can be re-worn as needed.) Dental hygiene equipment, some knives and sticks, a scuffed old copy of the Iliad, laptop, cell phone, wallet, keys. . . I felt like I was forgetting something. Something important. Something. . . delicious. “Of course!” I dove for the Twinkies and stuffed them triumphantly into my bag. “You’re quite welcome, future self.” Now I was ready to roll.

Vermont’s a windswept place of crags and firs; whenever I visit, I feel like I should be racing through it on foot with an elf and a dwarf at my flanks. As I traveled north, pondering somber things, the fog gave way to snow—the first snowfall I’d seen this winter. Come to think of it, winter wasn’t even here yet; it was still the second week of Advent. Solstice fell on the twenty-third, the old pagan feast that we pre-empted and turned into Christmas. I say “we.” Fr. Joe assured me as often as I would listen that I was in fact doing God’s work whether I believed or not. Did I buy that? I don’t know, maybe. Better than working for the GOB.

About a year after I started retrieving the Possessed, I got a visit from a cadaverous individual who called himself Coventry—Benjamin Coventry. He claimed to know Jacob Hatfield, my old master, and he said he’d been watching me. Said he represented an organization that could offer the proper scope for my abilities, and give me the strength to seize whatever I wanted. I pointed out that I already had more than enough strength to seize his larynx and turn it into a hood ornament, but he merely smiled and gave me his card. There was nothing on it but the head of a melancholy king, along with the heads of a cat and a toad, all mounted on the twisted legs of a spider. I burned it, dumped the ashes in my toilet, and pissed on them. But that was not the last time we crossed paths.

It’s about a four-hour drive from Beantown to B-town, besides a brief stop for dinner, gas, and coffee; darkness was settling over the Green Mountains as Dave and I hit I-89 and entered the last phase of our journey. I wasn’t tired, but I figured I’d better secure my lodgings for the night before I went wandering around Burlington in the cold. I’d been here a couple of times before, and I knew just the place for a wayfarer to find rest. As we cruised into the snowy, Yule-lit city, I took a right down Shelburne Road and headed for sanctuary: Dill’s Boardinghouse, of which so many tales have told.