Practical Demonkeeping Chapter 19-20

19JENNYS HOUSE jenny parked the Toyota behind Traviss Chevy and killed the lights.Well? Travis said.Jenny said, Would you uniform to come in?Well. Travis acted as if he had to loadk slightly it. Yes, Id love to.Give me a minute to go in and dismiss a path, okay?No problem, I need to check on slightly occasion in my railway car.Thanks. Jenny smiled with relief.They got turn place of the car. Jenny went into the accommodate. Travis leaned against the door of the Chevy and waited for her to train inside. thus he threw open the car door and peeked inside.Catch was academic term on the passenger side, his face stuck in a comic exclusivelyow. He looked up at Travis and grinned.Oh, youre masking.Did you play the radio?No mien.Good. Its wired into the stamp battery directly itll drain the current.Didnt touch it.Travis glanced at the suitcase on the backseat. remain an eye on that.You got it.Travis didnt move.Is there something wrong?Well, youre being awfully agreeable.I t a ging you, Im serious glad to converge you having a good judgment of conviction.You may down to confirmation the night in the car. You bent hungry, are you?Get a grip, Travis. I just ate last night.Travis nodded. Ill check on you later, so stay here. Travis closed the car door.Catch jumped to his feet and watched everywhere the dashboard temporary hookup Travis went into the ho drug abuse. Ironically, they were both thinking the same thing in a little while this will all be oer.Catch coughed and a red bar heel shot out of his mouth and bounced off the windshield, spattering the field glass with hellish spit.Robert had parked his truck a block away from his gaga house and walked up, hoping and dreading that he would catch Jenny with another hu bitness. As he appro endured the house, he see the erstwhile(a) Chevy parked in front end of her Toyota.He had ladder by this scene a hundred measure in his bear in mind. Walk out of the dark, catch her with the guy, and shout Ah ha therefore things got sketchy.What was the point? He didnt really want to catch her at some(prenominal)thing. He wanted her to come to the door with tears streaming down her cheeks. He wanted her to throw her arms around him and beg him to come home. He wanted to assure her that everything would be fine and forgive her for throwing him out. He had run that scene finished his mind a hundred clips as well. After they make love for the third time, things got sketchy.The Chevy was not dismantle of his preconceived scenes. It was wish well a preview, a teaser. It meant that soulfulness was in the house with Jenny. Some single who, un comparable Robert, had been invited. New scenes ran with his mind knocking on the door, having Jenny answer, looking around her shoulder to see another man sitting on the cast, and being sent away. He couldnt stand that. It was besides real.Maybe it wasnt a guy at all. Maybe it was wiz of the women from the coven who had stop over to comfort Jenny in her time of need. Then the pipe dream came back to him. He was tied to a c whisker in the recant again, watching Jenny make love with another man. The little colossus was shoving saltines in his mouth.Robert realized he had been standing in the middle of the route thoroughgoing(a) at the house for several proceedings, torturing himself. Just be adult intimately it. Go up and knock on the door. If she is with someone else, just excuse yourself and come back later. He mat up an ache raise in his chest at the thought.No, just walk away. Go back to The Breezes trailer and call her tomorrow. The thought of another night completely with his heartbreak increased the ache in his chest.Roberts indecision had always wild Jenny. instantly it was paralyzing him. Just pick a direction and go, Robert, she would say. It cant be any(prenominal) worse than sitting here pitying yourself. however its the only thing Im good at, he thought.A truck rounded the corner and started be hind to roll up the street. Robert was galvanized into action. He ran to the Chevy and ducked behind it. Im hiding in front of my own house. This is silly, he thought. Still, it was as if anyone who passed would cut how small and washed-out he was. He didnt want to be seen.The truck slowed well-nigh to a stop as it passed the house, consequently the driver gunned the engine and sped off. Robert stayed in a crouch behind the Chevy for several minutes before he moved.He had to know.Just pick a direction and go. He pertinacious to peek in the windowpanes. There were two windows in the living direction, about six feet off the ground. Both were old-style, weighted-sash types. Jenny had planted geraniums in the window boxes outside. If the window boxes were strong enough, he could hoist himself up and peek through and through the gap in the drawn draperys.Spying on your own wife was sleazy. It was dirty. It was perverse. He thought about it for a here and now, consequently made his way crosswise the yard to the windows. Sleazy, dirty, and perverse would be improvements over how he snarl now.He grab bang the edge of the window box and tested his weight against it. It held. He pulled himself up, hooked his chin on the window box, and peered through the gap in the curtains.They were on the couch, facing away from him Jenny and some man. For a moment he thought Jenny was naked, then he saw the thin straps of her black dress. She never wore that dress anymore. It gave out the wrong kind of message, she apply to say, meaning it was to a fault sexy.He stared at them in fascination, caught by the verity of his fear like a deer caught in car headlights. The man turned to say something to Jenny, and Robert caught his profile. It was the guy from the nightmare, the guy he had seen in the pull that afternoon.He couldnt look any longer. He lowered himself to the ground. A stat mi of sad questions beat at him. Who was this guy? What was so great about this guy? Wh at does he lay down that I dont? Worst of all, how long has this been waiver on?Robert stumbled away from the house toward the street. They were sitting in his house, on his couch the couch he and Jenny had saved up to buy. How could she do that? Didnt everything in the house remind her of their marriage? How could she sit on his couch with some other man? Would they screw in his bed? The ache rose wine up in his chest at the thought, almost doubling him over.He thought about trashing the guys car. It was pretty trashed already, though. Flatten the tires? Break the windshield? egest in the gas tank? No, then he would have to book to spying. besides he had to do something.Maybe he could find something in the car that would tell him who this home wrecker was. He peered through the Chevys windows. vigor much to see a few fast-food wrappers, a comic book on the front seat, and a Haliburton suitcase on the backseat. Robert recognized it immediately. He used to carry his four-by -five camera in the same model suitcase. He had sold the camera and given the suitcase to The Breeze for rent.Was this guy a photographer? One way to find out. He hesitated, his hand on the car door handle. What if the guy came out while Robert was rummaging through the car? What would he do? Fuck it. The guy was rummaging through his life, wasnt he? Robert tried the door. It was unlocked. He threw it open and r from each oneed in.20EFFROMHe was a soldier. Like all soldiers, in his spare moments he was thinking of home and the daughter who waited for him there. He sit on a hammock looking out over the rolling English countryside. It was dark, hardly his eyes had adjusted during his long fend for duty. He smoked a cigarette and watched the patterns the full moon made on the mounds when the low cloud cover parted.He was a boy, just seventeen. He was in love with a brown-haired, blue-eyed girl named Amanda. She had down-soft hair on her thighs that tickled his palms when he pushe d her skirt up around her hips. He could see the autumn sun on her thighs, even though he was staring over the spring-green hills of England.The clouds undetermined and let the moon light up the building block countryside.The girl pulled his pants down around his knees.The trenches were only four eld away. He took a deep drag on the cigarette and stubbed it out in the grass. He let the smoke out with a sigh.The girl kissed him hard and wet and pulled him down on her.A shadow appeared on the distant hill, black and sharply defined. He watched the shadow undulate crossways the hills. It cant be, he thought. They never fly chthonic a full moon. But the cloud cover?He looked in the sky for the airship precisely could see nothing. It was obtuse except for the crickets singing sex songs. The countryside was still exactly for the shadow. He lost the vision of the girl. Everything was the huge, cigar-shaped shadow moving toward him, silent as death.He knew he should run, sound the a larm, warn his friends, entirely he just sat, watching. The shadow eclipsed the moonlight and he shivered, the airship was directly over him. He could just hear the engines as it passed. Then he was bathed in moonlight, the shadow behind him. He had survived. The airship had held its bellyful of death. Then he comprehend the explosions begin behind him. He turned and watched the flashes and fires in the distance, listened to the screams, as his friends at the base woke to find themselves on fire. He moaned and curled into a ball, flinching each time a bomb exploded.Then he woke up.There was no justice Effrom was sure of it. Not an iota, not one scintilla, not a molecule of justice in the world. If there was justice, would he be plagued by nightmares from the war? If there was any justice would he be losing residue over something that had happened over seventy years ago? No, justice was a myth, and it had died like all myths, strangled by the overwhelming reality of experience.Eff rom was too uncomfortable to mourn the passing of justice. The wife had put the flannel sheets on the bed to keep him cozy and warm in her absence. (They still slept in concert after all those years it never occurred to them to do any different.) Now the sheets were heavy and cold with sweat. Effroms pajamas clung to him like a rain-blown shroud.After missing his nap, he had gone to bed early to try to recapture his dreams of spandex-clad young women, but his subconscious had conspired with his stomach to send him a nightmare instead. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he could feel his stomach bubbling away like a cannibals caldron, trying to digest him from the inside out.To say that Effrom was not a particularly good cook was an understatement akin to saying that genocide is not a particularly effective public relations strategy. He had dogged that Tater Tots would provide as good a meal as anything, without challenging his culinary abilities. He read the cooking instructions caref ully, then did some simple mathematics to expedite the preparation twenty minutes at 375 degrees would mean only eleven minutes at 575 degrees. The results of his slowness resembled charcoal briquettes with frozen centers, but because he was in a travel to get to bed, he drowned the suffering Tots in catsup and ate them anyway. lesser did he know that their spirits would return carrying nightmare images of the zeppelin attack. He had never been so frightened, even in the trenches, with bullets flying overhead and indian mustard gas on the wind. That shadow moving silently across the hills had been the worst.But now, sitting on the edge of the bed, he matte the same paralyzing fear. though the dream was fading, instead of the relief of finding himself safe, at home, in bed, he felt he had awakened into something worse than the nightmare. Someone was moving in the house. Someone was thrashing around like a two-year-old in a pan-rattling contest.Whoever it was, was coming through the living room. The house had a wooden chronicle and Effrom knew its every squeak and creak. The creaks were moving up the hall. The intruder opened the lavatory door, two doors from Effroms bedroom.Effrom remembered the old pistol in his sock drawer. Was there time? Effrom shook off his fear and hobbled to the dresser. His legs were stiff and wobbly and he virtually sink into the front of the dresser.The floor was creaking outside the guest bedroom. He heard the guest room door open. HurryHe opened the dresser drawer and dug around under his socks until he establish the pistol. It was a British revolver he had brought home from the war a Webley, chambered for.45 automatic cartridges. He broke the pistol open like a shotgun and looked into the cylinders. Empty. Holding the gun open, he dug under his socks for the bullets. Three cartridges were held in a plate of steel shaped like a half-moon so the pistols six cylinders could be loaded in two quick motions. The British had d eveloped the system so they could use the same rimless cartridges in their revolvers that the Americans used in their Colt automatics.Effrom located one of the half-moon clips and dropped it into the pistol. Then he started searching for the sound.The doorknob of his room started to turn. No time. He flipped the gun upward and it slammed shut, only half loaded. The door easily started to swing open. Effrom aimed the Webley at the center of the door and pulled the trigger.The gun clicked, the hammer fell on an empty chamber. He pulled the trigger again and the gun fired. internal the small bedroom the guns report sounded like the end of the world. A large, chevvy hole appeared in the door. From the hall came the high-pitched scream of a woman. Effrom dropped the gun.For a moment he stood there, gunfire and the scream echoing in his head. Then he thought of his wife. Oh my God Amanda He ran forward. Oh my God, Amanda. Oh my He threw the door open, leapt back, and grabbed his chest. The giant was down on its hands and knees. His arms and head filled the doorway. He was laughing.Fooled you, fooled you, the addict chanted.Effrom endorse into the bed and fell. His mouth moved like wind-up yack dentures, but he made no sound.Nice shot, old fella, the addict said. Effrom could see the squashed remains of the.45 bullet just above the monsters top(prenominal) lip, stuck like an obscene beauty mark. The monster flipped the bullet off with a single claw. The heavy slug thudded on the carpet.Effrom has having trouble breathing. His chest was ontogeny tighter with each breath. He slid off the bed to the floor.Dont die, old man. I have questions for you. You cant imagine how pissed Ill be if you die now.Effroms mind was a exsanguine blur. His chest was on fire. He sensed someone talking to him, but he couldnt understand the lecture. He tried to speak, but no words would come. Finally he found a breath. Im sorry, Amanda. Im sorry, he gasped.The monster crawled into the room and pose a hand on Effroms chest. Effrom could feel the hand, hard and scaly, through his pajamas. He gave up.No the monster shouted. You will not dieEffrom was no longer in the room. He was sitting on a hill in England, watching the shadow of death floating toward him across the fields. This time the zeppelin was coming for him, not the base. He sat on the hill and waited to die. Im sorry, Amanda.No, not tonight.Who said that? He was alone on the hill. Suddenly he became aware of a searing aggravator in his chest. The shadow of the airship began to fade, then the whole English countryside dissolved. He could hear himself breathing. He was back in the bedroom.A warm glow filled his chest. He looked up and saw the monster looming over him. The pain in his chest subsided. He grabbed one of the monsters claws and tried to pry it from his chest, but it remained fast, not biting into the flesh, just laid upon it.The monster spoke to him You were doing so good with the gun and everything. I was thinking, This old fuck really has some gumption. Then you go and start drooling and take a breath and ruining a perfectly good first impression. Wheres your self-respect?Effrom felt the warmth on his chest spreading to his limbs. His mind wanted to alter off, dive under the covers of unconsciousness and hide until daylight, but something kept bringing him back.Now, thats better, isnt it? The monster removed his hand and backed to the corner of the bedroom, where he sat cross-legged looking like the Buddha of the lizards. His pointy ears scraped against the ceiling when he turned his head.Effrom looked at the door. The monster was perhaps eight feet away from it. If he could get through it, maybe How fast could a beast that size move in the confines of the house?Your jammies are all wet, the monster said. You should diversity or youll catch your death.Effrom was amazed at the reality shift his mind had made. He was accepting this A monster was in his house, ta lking to him, and he was accepting it. No, it couldnt be real.Youre not real, he said.Neither are you, the monster retorted.Yes I am, Effrom said, feeling stupid.Prove it, the monster said.Effrom lay on the bed thinking. Much of his fear had been replaced by a macabre sense of wonder.He said I dont have to prove it. Im right here.Sure, the monster said, incredulously.Effrom climbed to his feet. Upon rising he realized that the creak in his knees and the stiffness he had carried in his back for forty years were gone. Despite the strangeness of this situation, he felt great.What did you do to me?Me? Im not real. How could I do anything?Effrom realized he had backed himself into a metaphysical corner, from which the only escape was acceptance.All right, he said, youre real. What did you do to me?I kept you from croaking.Effrom made a connection at last. He had seen a movie about this aliens who come to Earth with the power to heal. Granted, this wasnt the foxy little leather-faced, li ghtbulb-headed alien from the movie, but it was no monster. It was a perfectly rule person from another planet.So, Effrom said, do you want to use the phone or something?Why?To phone home. Dont you want to phone home?Dont play with me, old man. I want to know why Travis was here this afternoon.I dont know anyone named Travis.He was here this afternoon. You spoke with him I saw it.You mean the indemnification man? He wanted to talk to my wife.The monster moved across the room so quickly that Effrom almost fell back on the bed to avoid him. His hopes of making it through the door dissolved in an instant. The monster loomed over him. Effrom could smell his fetid breath.He was here for the antic and I want it now, old man, or Ill hang your entrails from the curtain rods.He wanted to talk to the wife. I dont know nothin about any magic. Maybe you should have landed in Washington. They run things from there.The monster picked Effrom up and shook him like a rag doll.Where is your wif e, old man?Effrom could almost hear his brain rattling in his head. The monsters hand squeezed the breath out of him. He tried to answer, but all he could produce was a pathetic croak.Where? The monster threw him on the bed.Effrom felt the air burn back into his lungs. Shes in Monterey, visiting our daughter.When will she be back? Dont lie. Ill know if you are lying.How will you know?Try me. Your guts should go well with this decor.Shell be home in the morning.Thats enough, the monster said. He grabbed Effrom by the shoulder and dragged him through the door. Effrom felt his shoulder pop out of its socket and a grinding pain flashed across his chest and back. His last thought before passing out was, God help me, Ive killed the wife.