We reached the main lake road, leading out past a mechanic shop towards the wooded lake beyond. Marci pulled ahead, flipping into high gear and standing on the pedals to build up speed. I pushed hard to catch up, and the wind brushed past my face like a cool curtain. Marci was very fast, and watching her legs pump up and down I realised she was probably in much better shape than I was. It also convinced me that being a few bike-lengths behind wasn’t really that bad of a place to be.
I used to have rules about watching girls: I simply never allowed myself to do it. I’ve lived half of my life in constant fear of my own thoughts – of my own darker nature that lurked inside, eager to snap up any lead I gave it and overpower me completely. I had dreams about killing my friends and family; I had fantasies, day and night, about catching and binding and torturing the people I met on the street. I’d even fantasised about embalming Marci. There was something inside of me that longed for blood and pain, not because it liked them but because it couldn’t be satisfied by anything less. I didn’t feel normal emotions in the same way as other people; things like love and kindness were foreign to me, while harsher feelings like hate and fear and envy were all too close to the surface. If I wanted to feel a powerful emotional experience, violence was pretty much the only way I could do it – so allowing myself to become attached to a girl was, rather obviously, a bad idea.
Brooke had gotten a glimpse of that side of me, locked away in Forman’s house a few months ago. I didn’t hurt her, but she knew. We hadn’t spoken since.
But the thing was, now that I was a real demon hunter, everything was different. My dark side had a safe outlet, and my dreams at night were heroic tales of John the Conqueror, slaying all the dark things of the world – and if I enjoyed the slaying a little more than necessary, well, that was my right. It didn’t hurt anyone but the demons, and hurting them was the whole point. Along with that change I’d let go of many of my rules, allowing myself for the first time to enjoy my life – to talk to people, to hunt demon, to look at girls. I was free.
Slowly, carefully, I let go of the handlebars and spread my arms wide. Marci glanced back, saw me, and did the same, whooping with exhilaration as we hurtled down the road. I closed my eyes and felt the wind on my face, sharp with danger and excitement. The town disappeared behind us, the wilderness rose up before us, and the road carried us headlong to nowhere.
Chapter 5
‘How’d your date go?’
‘Fine.’
It was the next morning, and I was trying to eat my breakfast in peace. Mom, on the other hand, was being a mom.
‘What’d you guys do?’
‘We just went out,’ I said. ‘It was nothing.’ Which was true – it really was nothing. We’d ridden around on our bikes for a while, which was fun enough, I guess, but it’s hard to carry on much of a conversation while you’re twenty feet apart on a bike trail. That was fine with me, because I’m horrible at talking to people, but Marci had probably been bored out of her mind.
‘Well, it’s not
nothing
,’ said Mom. She was standing in the hall, holding a curling iron to her hair while I ate a bowl of cereal in the kitchen. ‘You’ve never gone out with her before, so that’s got to be
something
.’
‘I’ve barely ever gone out with anybody before,’ I said.
‘So it’s even more of a something. You took your bike instead of the car: did you go bike riding somewhere?’
‘I actually didn’t ride it at all. I walked it all the way to her house, and then left it on her porch.’
‘Don’t be a smart aleck.’
‘And then,’ I continued, ‘since I didn’t have a car, I had to carry her everywhere we went.’
Mom smiled. ‘Well, at least it wasn’t a total loss.’
‘What?’
‘What do you mean, “what?” I know a hot babe when I see one.’
‘I really don’t need to hear that kind of comment from my mom.’
She ducked back around the corner to the bathroom, and I sighed in relief and ate some more cereal. A moment later she re-emerged, the curling iron wrapped up in a different lock of hair.
I rolled my eyes. ‘Seriously, Mom, how long is that cord? I thought the kitchen would be a safe place to eat breakfast this morning.’
‘I plugged it in here in the hall,’ she said. ‘It’s just long enough to reach the kitchen and the bathroom if I walk back and forth.’
‘Well, that’s wonderful.’
‘So you went bike riding, then,’ she said. ‘Just around town? Out in the forest trails somewhere?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We went out to Forman’s place.’
Her face twisted: eyes widening, nostrils flaring. It was her ‘shocked’ face, with a dash of ‘confused’. ‘Really?’
‘Of course not,’ I said, ‘but the face you just made almost makes this conversation worth it.’
‘John . . .’
‘It’s still not worth it, but it almost was.’
‘To the lake then,’ she said, plunging onward. She was tenacious this morning. ‘It’s wonderful weather for the lake. Did you go swimming?’
‘We went skinny dipping.’
‘Can you please just answer a simple question without the attitude?’ She stepped back around the corner again. I thought I’d get a moment of respite, but she kept talking, shouting from the bathroom. ‘It may surprise you to know this, but there are children – some of them teenage boys, just like you – who actually carry on open, honest conversations with their mothers.’
‘I find it very hard to believe that there are other teenage boys just like me.’ I finished my cereal and stood up. ‘I also find it a little terrifying.’
She came back around the corner, having readjusted the curler again. Her face was no longer playful. ‘I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to talk about anything uncomfortable.’
I walked past her into the living room. ‘Finally something we agree on. Let’s stop talking right now.’ I turned on the TV. I could probably still catch most of the morning news.
‘Come on, John,’ she said. ‘I’m just asking how things went on your date. I want to be involved in your life.’ I ignored her and flipped through the channels. ‘The cord reaches in here even better than the kitchen,’ she said. ‘We can keep talking.’
‘We can,’ I said, ‘but we can also stop. That’s called “freedom of choice”.’
‘You know, I was really getting to like the fact that we didn’t watch the news during every single meal any more—’ She stopped abruptly, caught by the news footage. It had caught me at the same moment, and we stared at it. ‘That’s City Hall.’
‘Yeah.’
There was a reporter at Clayton’s City Hall, talking intently to the camera while several policemen milled around behind her, armed and edgy. In the background, parked right in front of the steps, was an ambulance with flashing lights, and near it a swarm of paramedics clustered around something on the ground. I caught a glimpse of Ron, the Coroner, standing with them. Someone was dead.
‘Turn it up,’ Mom said softly.
‘We have Sheriff Meier with us,’ the reporter said, and the camera zoomed out and panned over to reveal the Sheriff standing stiffly on the reporter’s left. ‘Sheriff Meier, what can you tell us about this attack on the Mayor?’
Mom gasped. ‘The Mayor!’
‘It appears to have happened late last night,’ said the Sheriff. He looked tired, and I guessed that he’d been up for several hours already. ‘The Mayor and one of his aides were the only ones in the building at the time, and both were attacked; the aide received a blow to the head but was otherwise unharmed, and he’s on his way to the hospital now.’
‘The Handyman typically attacks his victims in their homes,’ said the reporter. ‘Do you have any idea why he might have attacked the Mayor here, in his office?’
The Sheriff bristled at that, as he so often did with the press. ‘This case bears remarkable similarity to the Handyman killings, yes, but we want to stress that the connection is still conjecture. We are investigating any and all evidence, and if it turns out that this is the real Handyman and not a copycat, we will proceed from there.’
‘Besides,’ I added, talking to the screen, ‘the Handyman kills people at home
and
at work – he killed a police officer in his car once. This reporter doesn’t know what she’s talking about.’
Mom shook her head. ‘I can’t believe this is happening. The Mayor.’
I whistled. ‘She’s mad, all right.’
‘The reporter?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘the demon.’
‘Then God help us all.’ Mom stood up and walked back to the bathroom.
The reporter nodded solemnly. ‘Thank you very much for your time.’
‘You’re welcome,’ said the Sheriff, looking a bit impatient, and he left to walk back towards the crime scene. The reporter turned back to the camera, which zoomed in until she filled the screen.
‘We also want to mention that City Hall and the adjoining courthouse will be closed throughout the day while police and other investigators look for evidence,’ she said. ‘Some county employees have been given the day off, others are being questioned, but there are still no solid leads as to the evidence of Clayton County’s newest killer. This is Carrie Walsh, Five Live News.’
‘City Hall is closed?’ asked Mom. She was standing behind me, curling a new part of her hair. ‘We have a meeting there today.’
‘Not any more,’ I said.
‘Then why am I curling my hair?’
‘Because if you stop halfway through you’ll look like an idiot.’
‘That was a rhetorical question, John.’ She walked back to the bathroom and shouted: ‘What is wrong with our town?’
‘We’re being hunted by—’
‘I know,’ she said, coming back into the room. ‘I know it’s a demon, okay? I know it, and I admit it, and it scares the living hell out of me. But what are we supposed to do? How can we just carry on? How can we stay here and do this job, for the love of . . . I feel like a war profiteer, getting rich while everyone dies.’
‘We’re not supposed to just carry on,’ I said. ‘We’re supposed to stop it.’
‘No, we’re not!’ she told me, her voice rising. ‘The police are supposed to stop it, and you are not the police. You’re not trained, you’re not armed – you’re not even old enough to vote!’
‘Young or old, I am the only one who knows anything about this.’
‘There has to be someone else,’ she said, rushing forward to grab my arm. ‘If they’re really real, and really out there, there have to be other people that know about them. Maybe we can talk to them.’
‘What, like some kind of conspiracy freaks off the Internet?’
‘No,’ she said, staring at the floor and rubbing her mouth with her hand. Her other hand kept a vice-like grip on my arm. ‘Not other civilians, but trained people. Government people. They’ve got to know, right? There’s probably a branch of the government designed just for this, some secret group that nobody knows about.’
‘And if nobody knows about them,’ I said, ‘how are we ever possibly going to find them? What are we going to say? If we call the police right now and tell them we want to speak with the Special Demon Unit, no one would believe us.’
‘We don’t have to find them; we just make an official report and
they’ll
find
us
.’
‘We already reported it when Crowley died, remember?’ I said. ‘That put us in touch with the FBI, which put us in touch with Forman, who turned out to be another demon. Last time I trusted the FBI I ended up drinking my own urine in a hole under some guy’s house. We’re on our own for this.’
‘You can’t say that,’ Mom objected. ‘I will not let you do this.’
‘So you’re just going to ignore it while everybody dies around you?’
‘What do you think you’re going to do, John?’ she demanded, putting her hands on her hips. ‘What? Help me understand.’