Personal Demons

Chapter 23

One thin line of blood ran down Greyson's back, soaking into the pale fabric of the skirt-thing he wore. Beneath it she could barely see the pad on which he knelt. At least Templeton had done that. He might order Greyson whipped with an iron-tipped whip, but he wasn't barbaric about it. He'd provided some padding to protect his victim's knees. Bile was sour in her throat.

Greyson's head bowed forward, his arms lifted in a V and bound by the wrists to a metal frame. Megan closed her eyes but the image wouldn't disappear. Once she'd seen his back in her dreams. Now it would forever be part of her nightmares and she knew the worst was yet to come.

"Please don't." She turned panicked eyes to Templeton. "Please, I'll try to remember. I tried before, with Brian, and I almost did. Just give me a minute to—"

"No."

Megan yelped as the impassive servant standing a few feet away raised the whip again and brought it down. Greyson's muscles twitched as another line of blood joined the first, but he made no sound.

"Templeton, you're hurting him, I can't think—"

Tension laced Greyson's voice. "Not helping, Meg."

"Remember, Megan." Templeton puffed his cigar. "Greyson must be punished. We're just giving you a chance to mitigate his pain."

Another lash. Another twitch. Megan shrank back into her chair, her mind racing. The demons watched her. She hated them. Hated them so much she wanted to leap from her chair and scratch out their eyes, to rip them apart, to bite and kick and—

The face of the doctor. She scratched and bit, until blood ran from his cheek, and laughed as he stumbled away from her. Too bad she hadn't laughed sooner. Her arms were bound, her legs tied at the ankles. Bound the way Greyson was bound now, but she was in bed, and someone else watched her from the corner, someone she couldn't see but who spoke in her head.

The Accuser.

"That's good, Megan," he said.

Was he there in the room with the teenage Megan in her room, or was he here, now, in her head? He shouldn't have been able to find her here, but she didn't remember him being there, that summer. There in her room when the doctor came.

She shook her head.

"Remembering something?" Templeton's voice interrupted her thoughts.

"I don't ... I don't know."

Another lash. She couldn't look at him. Greyson was still quiet, but how long would he be able to stay so? Ten lashes? Twenty? Sooner or later even he wouldn't be able to hold it in, right?

Think, Megan, think. What happened in the bedroom? Why was the doctor there? The memory was a white space in her head, a cloud of oblivion she couldn't seem to wade through no matter how hard she tried.

Another lash. This time she looked, forcing herself to face what was happening because of her reluctant brain. The blood seemed to form a pattern against the smooth tawny skin of his back. A pattern, random like rain on a window but with its own design anyway, just like—

The blood criss-crossing Harlan Trooper's face as the invisible thing attacked him.

He'd tried to save her.

She'd been sixteen, coming home to an empty house. How exciting! The Ouija board was waiting. Megan had always wanted to see what it would be like to communicate with spirits. Maybe they would tell her something special about herself. Maybe they knew why she always felt different from the other kids.

She'd always suspected she had special abilities in that direction. Sometimes she just knew things. What people were thinking, what they'd done. Like when she was going to sell Girl Scout cookies and just knew not to go to old Mr. Urster's house. Mr. Urster turned out to be a bad man and the police came to get him.

Clearly she was a witch or something. And witches used Ouija boards and Tarot cards, but Megan had no way to get Tarot cards so this was the next best thing. She ran up to her room and pulled the box out from under her bed...

The whip hissed through the air. Megan jumped, a tiny shriek escaping her lips. Greyson still made no sound, but his ragged breathing filled her ears. The muscles in his arms were corded and veined where he strained against the cuffs. The blood-soaked waist of his kilt clung to his lean hips.

"I'd be happy to stop his punishment, Megan, anytime. Normally this would continue for hours, but the information you can give us is important enough to cut it short. Anything yet?"

She shook her head, unable to look away from Greyson's bowed head. How soft and smooth his hair had felt in her hand. How his forehead pressed against hers as he slid into her body. His back ... so smooth under her fingertips ... the way his muscles moved when they were in bed together.

She forced herself to stop recalling it, to move further back, back to that day in her room. It became harder to breathe as she pushed her way through the fog in her head, great choking clouds that threatened to kill her before she could reach the memories she needed. Damn it!

There had to be something, a word, a sound, something that would bring it back, the way the blood pattern had given her a flash just moment ago. She thought of a Ouija board, of the ornate lettering on the tan box she'd bought at a garage sale ... and something opened a crack, just enough for her to force herself inside.

She put the Ouija board back under the bed, disappointed. Why didn't it work? She'd been up here for an hour now, her fingers as light on the planchette as she could make them, and nothing happened. Her parents would be home soon and she hadn't done any of her chores, either. It hadn't even been worth it ... there was nothing special about her.

Megan didn't bother to fight the tears. Nothing special at all. The kids at school were right, the way they talked about her, the looks they gave her. She was dirt, less than dirt. A loser, a freak...

"But a freak with potential," said a voice. Megan, curled under the bedcovers, sat up so fast her head swam.

"What?"

"You have potential, little one. You're not wrong about that. And I can help you reach it."

The voice seemed to be coming from inside the room, but Megan was alone. Now she was imagining things. Great. One more thing to make her the butt of everyone's jokes. She pulled the covers back over her head.

"Don't try to hide from me, Megan. I know you hear me. I have a deal to make with you."

"You're not really here," Megan said.

"No, I'm not. But I am real and you can help me come back. I'll help you in return."

"How?" Not that she would say yes. But it never hurt to ask.

"I can strengthen your abilities. You'll know everything, Megan. One look at someone, one touch, and you'll know what they're thinking, what they're doing ... you're not a bad psychic, now. But you could be great. You won't need a Ouija board to talk to spirits."

Somewhere in the back of her mind Megan knew this wasn't the best idea. A disembodied voice offered to give her—no, strengthen her—psychic abilities. She should say no.

But she didn't want to say no. Imagine the looks on their faces, those jerks at school, when she laughed at them for what she knew they were thinking, their reactions when she could gossip about all of them and always be right. Then they would know how it felt to be laughed at. The way their laughter echoed in her ears every day, every night. If she listened hard she could still hear them...

Another lash. Greyson's hands fisted and straightened, fisted and straightened, covered in blue-white flames.

The demons around her ate and chatted quietly, watching Greyson's skin being sliced open with the whip as if it were a mildly entertaining film. The smell of the food made her sick. Her stomach roiled, twisting, until she was certain she was going to throw up—

All over the floor, all over the bed, until there was nothing left in her stomach and still she could not stop it. The thing in her head spun and whirled. Spots danced in front of her eyes, the colors so bright they shrieked. Even when she forced her lids down they didn't stop.

Sweat poured off her forehead. Her clothes were drenched with it, but her teeth chattered and her fingers were so stiff she couldn't pull the disgusting comforter back over her body. She was going to die. She knew it, just as surely as she'd ever known anything. This was the end.

Her throat, already raw from the force of her sickness, burned as she screamed. Another voice mixed with hers, deep and male, turning the scream from terror to triumph and Megan's sickness into ecstasy.

She stood up, her hands running along the smooth lines of her young body. Her own fingers felt her skin, but someone else felt it, too, through her, and it liked what it felt. She couldn't hear him in her head anymore but she knew he was there, waiting.

Waiting for what?

"He invaded my head," she gasped, squeezing her arms as tightly around herself as they would go. The room swam, like a double image, her childhood bedroom superimposed on the demons eating dinner.

"Stop." Templeton held a hand out to the figure holding the whip. For a moment only Greyson's tortured breath broke the silence.

"What do you mean, he invaded your head? The Accuser?"

She nodded. Her lips refused to form the words themselves.

"How did he do that? Did you invite him?"

Again she nodded. "He said he had a deal for me. I took it." She looked up at him and was shocked to see sympathy on his broad face. "I was only sixteen, I thought—"

"Why her?" asked one of the male demons. "What was so special about her, that he could use her to get back in?"

"Power." She barely recognized Greyson's voice. Only her fear of what they would do to him kept her from running to him.

"But I wasn't powerful, I couldn't even get a Ouija board to work. I only had hunches, feelings. Nothing like what I have now. He gave me this power."

Greyson cleared his throat. "You had it. Without him."

"But—"

"We can discuss it later," Templeton said. "Grey needs to save his breath. How did he do it, Megan? How did he invade your head?"

"He made me say something." The words were there, in her head, just out of reach.

"Don't repeat it." Something like fear colored Templeton's words. "Don't even think it."

"I can't remember anyway."

The demons exchanged glances, but didn't speak.

"What happened next?"

She bit her lip. "Just give me a minute, okay? Just wait a minute, let me—"

The whip cracked again. Greyson grunted.

"I'm telling you! I'm telling you what I know! Leave him alone!"

"But this seems to be working so well to jog your memory." He nodded at the man holding the whip. Another line of blood. Another soft grunt. The flames in Greyson's hands leapt.

"What did he want, Megan? What did he want you to do?"

"He ... he wanted me to find..."

The hospital. The one in their town had what was still called, even in those days, a mental ward. At least, that's what the hospital called it. The citizens of the town had worse names, names that used to hurt Megan when she heard them. The people living there were less than human in the eyes of her neighbors, her teachers. They laughed and made jokes, especially when the nurses would take their patients out for the day. Megan hated that. She'd see them, these people just like her—better than her, at least these people seemed to like each other—smiling as they bought themselves a Coke or a movie ticket, and she'd remember the jokes and taunts. Her eyes would fill and she had to look away.

The thing in her head—the Accuser—made her go there. Every night. They would stand outside the hospital. Megan hated it. The Accuser was always eager to go. It made her skin crawl, feeling his longing, his desire. Afterwards his satisfaction would come through to her too, the sensation of fullness.

She stopped eating. She barely slept. She'd go to bed in the middle of the night and wake up a few hours later, exhausted but full of queer, swimming energy. She didn't shower, she didn't brush her teeth. Now she saw how she gave up, how she'd screamed deep inside at the horror of her guest, but then ... she was too happy. The kids were scared of her, genuinely scared, and she swallowed their fear and their secrets, feeling like the most powerful girl on the planet.

The doctor came and she attacked him, while the voice in her head cheered her on and praised her.

Then they sent her to the hospital. To the mental ward. And the Accuser took over.

"He fed on despair," she muttered. "Their unhappiness, their confusion and anger ... it's what he needed. It's why he came to me. Not just power. Sadness."

"We're so close, Megan," Templeton said. "I think we almost have what we need."

The whip struck again. Greyson's ruined back was covered in blood, red as a nightmare, red as a child's finger-painting.

Red as Harlan Trooper's face as something sliced at him, as he sat up from the bench where he'd died to curse her. More than the invisible foe he battled, the thing Megan had never seen, the sight of the blood made her sick. The sight of his body destroyed on the bench and the tiny figures flitting around just out of her conscious vision, the personal demons that in her demon-possessed state she'd been able to see, racked her body with cold, nauseating chills. The hospital food she'd eaten just before her escape came up, both from the horrible faces staring at her and the sight and smell of the blood. He'd died to save her, to help her. He'd asked her if he could help and the thing had leapt from her to kill him, so full of power was it.

"It feeds on despair," she gasped, swallowing hard as Greyson screamed. The tortured sound echoed through the room. One of the other Meegra heads smiled and licked his lips, and if Megan hadn't been so sick and miserable and terrified she would have leapt across the table to scratch his piercing blue eyes out.

"What?"

"Despair." She folded her upper body over her legs, staring down at her feet. Her stomach felt better pressed into her thighs this way, and she could control the shivering better. "It's what he feeds on. It's where he gets his power. Despair and fear. He needs them." He'd certainly picked the perfect job. Through the haze of sweat, blood, and tears, Megan thought of the poor people at Fearbusters. How much of their energy had Art stolen so far?

And the personal demons worked for him. They created the despair he needed to live...

Templeton nodded. "You believe the Accuser is controlling the Yezer Ha-Ra? An interesting idea, Megan. Greyson was right to say you're smart."

"Isn't that enough? Can't you stop hurting him?"

"Almost." Templeton checked his watch. The bastard. "I have another appointment in an hour or so."

How he thought Greyson could take this for another hour she had no idea, unless he intended Greyson to die. Which was entirely possible, wasn't it?

She couldn't let that happen. Greyson's back looked like so much meat when she dared to glance at it, the kilt soaked red all the way down his thighs.

"But I don't know anything else," she managed. "I don't know how I got him out of me. We were in the park and I wanted him to go, to leave me alone, and Harlan Trooper was there, and I saw them, the personal demons I guess, and ... I was so angry, and I don't know how it happened but I kicked him out. And he killed Harlan, and he was in Harlan's body, and he wanted back into mine but I..."

Something flashed in front of her eyes, something tall and dark and covered with blood, a face that wouldn't come into focus. Its mouth opened, and she fell into it, and all she saw was blackness as its teeth closed around her.