Pandemonium

“It’s a demon called the Hellion,” I said. “It usually strikes kids who—”

“I know the Hellion,” O’Connell said shortly. “It’s certainly a clever choice.”

“I didn’t choose anything,” I said.

“The Hellion was part of the postwar cohort. Very active from the forties until about twenty years ago, when sightings suddenly became scarce. You’re the right age, and your story’s a tidy explanation for why it’s been so shy lately. Of course, you have a slight problem in that the Hellion didn’t disappear with you. There were dozens of sightings in the eighties—”

“Unconfirmed,” I said.

“Oh please, what’s confirmation? Parents are swearing that their child is possessed. Sure, the likeliest answer is that their little darlin’

just has attention deficit disorder, or maybe he never ‘attached’ to his mother, or maybe he’s just throwing a tantrum. But that still leaves a lot of cases. And there’s really no way to tell one way or another, is there? Who gets to decide who’s possessed and who’s not?”

“You do,” I said. “You know.”

“What does it matter?” Lew said, exasperated. “If the goat thing works, that ends the argument. All we need to be talking about now is how to find a replacement.”

“We can’t do that,” I said again.

Lew sat back, shocked at something in my voice.

“The Hellion only takes children,” O’Connell told him. “Specifically, fair-haired lads about waist high.”

“Oh,” Lew said. “Right.”

Lew and I didn’t talk on the way back to the motel. When we pulled into the parking lot he said, “We’re done here, right?” Here: the middle of the woods in Bumfuck, New York. O’Connell had made it clear she thought I was faking, and even if I wasn’t, she didn’t have much to offer. No rites, no rituals, no magic spells. Just the bargaining skills of a hostage negotiator, and a chance to sacrifice some innocent kid for my sake.

“Let’s go home,” I said.

But Lew was too worn out from yesterday’s day-long drive to start back tonight. We decided to get some sleep and head out early tomorrow. He went to his cabin for a nap while I walked the edge of the lake, one eye out for the Shug. The water was mirror-still. I felt fragile from lack of sleep, my limbs connected by misfiring circuits. The Hellion shuddered behind my eyeballs, reminding me: I’m here. I am with you always.

That evening we stopped at the front desk to check for messages, just in case O’Connell had suddenly remembered a handy incantation from the Necronomicon. Louise gave us directions to a restaurant. Lew complained that there were mice in his room.

“The mice aren’t in your room,” Louise said. “Your room’s out with the mice.”

We ate dinner fifteen miles away in a town called Merrett, at a storefront Italian restaurant with five tables—and one of those was the yellow chair table permanently reserved for the Fat Boy. The garlic bread was buttered French bread sprinkled with garlic powder, and the tomato sauce looked orange. I was glad I wasn’t hungry. My stomach had tightened from lack of sleep and the constant agitation of the Hellion. The demon had been in motion since O’Connell’s place, a ceaseless scrabbling. I wanted to pound my forehead against the table. Lew took my plate and started finishing off my lasagna, just like when we were kids.

I said, “You know what I saw down in the basement the other day?”

“RADAR Man comics?”

“Close. I mean, that too. But I opened up Life and Death.”

“Heh,” Lew said. “The Cyclops threw a fit.”

“I was thinking, you could use the oceans on the Risk board to have naval battles. You know, with the stuff from Battleship.” I’d had this idea weeks ago, staring at the ceiling from my bed in the psych ward. He nodded, chewing. “You’d have to figure out how to hide the ships. Maybe draw a grid on the oceans, but still use the Battleship boards to keep track of them.”