Axel came back, I wanted these kids to run away screaming, but I didn’t think they’d believe me if I told them.
As a precaution, I grabbed my key chain out of my locker and stuffed it in my pocket. My assorted antidemon trinkets made for uncomfortable bulk, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.
Kristyn arrived on schedule at five, and Paulo and Sarah left at seven. I should have gone with them, but I just couldn’t bring myself to leave Chris and Kristyn unprotected. The logical part of my brain knew he could still get to the kids outside work, but the totally irrational part was quite certain my mere presence would ward Axel off. It wasn’t unusual for me to stay well past my shift, and since we were busy, no one thought anything of it.
As the evening wore on, I felt increasingly stupid. Axel was obviously not coming back. He’d accomplished what he’d intended by sowing doubt and temptation in my mind-the big jerk. And if he wasn’t here hassling me and threatening my coworkers, where was he? My first thought was for Mira, of course, but I knew she was safely behind the house wards.
Still, what if he’d only avoided the wards because he had no reason to go inside until now? What if he himself was the one breaking the rules? I wouldn’t put it past him to bargain a soul for a confession. What if…? It occurred to me, when I noticed Kristyn staring at me, that she’d been trying to talk to me for several minutes. “Huh?”
“I said, Chris and I are gonna haul the trash out to the Dumpster; we’ll be back in a bit. You okay, old dude?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.” I forced a smile for her. “I’ll hold down the fort.” Once they were out the door and out of sight, I dropped my head to the glass counter with a sigh. I wasn’t sure I was fine at all. My stomach was in seven different kinds of knots, and I couldn’t seem to shake the goose bumps along my arms. Maybe I was getting sick.
I crouched to fish under the counter, looking for any Tylenol left behind. I had no luck, of course, but as I closed the sliding door, something caught my eye in the reflection. It was no more than a flicker of movement, somewhere behind and to my left, a black blur darting out of sight.
Whirling, I reached for the volume on the stereo, plunging the store into eerie silence. Nothing moved. “Who’s there?” Why do people always ask that? I mean, if something’s hiding from you, you really think they’re just going to pop up and say, “Oh, it’s me!”
I stepped out from behind the counter, glancing beneath the clothing racks and even the shelves, though something would have to be the size of a rat to fit under there. Nothing. Ok, maybe you’re taking paranoia to an extreme, old boy. You know… maybe I was taking paranoia to an extreme. And that wasn’t usually like me.
I fished my key chain out of my pocket, singling out the tiny mirror dangling on its chain. On the surface, it was the kind of compact mirror any girl might carry to check her makeup. But on the back, out of sight, Mira had scratched some runes that turned it into something more. It would take only a moment to see if my new suspicion was true.
I held the mirror up so that I could see over my right shoulder, turning slowly to scan the back of the store. Something twitched in the shadows under the clearance rack. I turned to look without the help of the mirror, and sure enough, that darker spot wasn’t there. “Tricky little bastard, aren’t you?”
Using the mirror again, I watched beneath the rack. Slowly, the culprit emerged to sit in the middle of the aisle.
It would have been easily mistaken for an extra-filthy dust mop, black coils of fur sticking out all over, except, y’know, for the four vaguely insectoid legs protruding from the scruffy mass, each ending in three grasping fingers. There were no eyes that I could see, but as I watched, the thing opened its massive mouth and started to groom its fur with its creepy little hands. The mouth took up nearly half its bulk, and I could see row upon row of sharp white teeth within-like a shark, and venomous to boot.
It was a Scrap demon, one of the parasites of Hell. I’m not even sure it should properly be called a demon. They had very little intelligence and normally existed by draining the life force out of unsuspecting humans. Like all true parasites, they weren’t strong enough to kill their host, but the intense feelings of despair and paranoia they exuded generally made for short life spans in their humans.
In rare circumstances, a stronger demon would use them to soften up his prey, and I had to wonder, “Who sent you, Creepy?” It almost had to be Axel. Dog Boy already had my soul under wraps; he’d gain nothing by this little guy’s sucking me dry. But Axel had reason to push me, to beat me down.
It obviously wasn’t smart enough to realize it had been seen. The Scrap demons hovered just on the other side of the veil, invisible to the naked eye or seen only in peripheral vision. Most of the time, they were explained away as a trick of the light or the neighbor’s cat. Only with something like Mira’s mirror could I get a decent look.
It appeared to be bored. It spidered its way around the floor, idly exploring this and that as it scuttled from shadow to shadow. Its legs bent at impossible angles with more joints than should have been necessary, and it opened its mouth on occasion as if making a cry I could not hear.
I couldn’t just leave it running loose. It was obviously sucking on me, and if I let it alone, it might attach to one of the kids. I just needed to get it into the physical where I could deal with it. Luckily, I had my handy-dandy magic mirror for that.
We sold novelty letter openers in the shape of swords, and I slowly slipped one from the counter. It’d do well enough. I followed the parasite’s reflection in the mirror, waiting to catch the whole thing in the glass. “Come on… just a bit farther…” As if it heard me, it paused with one foot poised, hesitating as I framed its image fully within the mirror. “Gotcha.”
With a quick clench of my hand, I snapped the mirror in half.
The screech behind me was almost deafening. I turned in time to see the nasty thing scuttle under the CD tower. “Come here, you little bastard!” I dove after it.
The mirror trick would work for only so long, and when the Scrap was done being startled, it’d fade back across again. I had to kill it before it got away… and before my coworkers got back.
It scurried out the back of the tower as I reached in from the front, and it made a break for the front of the store. I scrambled after it, throwing a novelty pillow ahead of it to startle it back away from the door. The cushion knocked an earring display off a shelf with a crash, and the demonic dust mop reversed direction in midscuttle, darting beneath a rack of T-shirts.
I slid to my knees to reach under there, only to find it gone. Dammit! Had it already faded back across? At the last possible second, I heard a low rattle above me. I jerked my head back as the Scrap dropped down from its hiding place in the shirts, jaws clacking viciously.
As ridiculous as the thing looked, the poison in its teeth wasn’t anything to laugh at. The venom splattered across the back of my hand and instantly burned like all holy hell. I backpedaled fast, scrubbing my hand on my jeans and upending the rack. The vermin charged at me for all of about two feet, screeching at the top of its demonic little lungs, then ducked away under another shelf again.
“Okay, that’s it!” I grabbed a shirt hook off the wall and went fishing. Lying on my stomach on the floor, I could just see the light reflected off its knobby legs, and I poked and prodded with the long hook until I hit something squishy. The thing came boiling out of its hiding place like a little hair ball of fury, snapping and snarling at my face. I don’t think I’ve ever jumped to my feet so fast in my life.
I managed to stomp down on one spindly leg, but before I could feel any kind of triumph, it just snapped the appendage off and limped for the door on three clawed hands. “No you don’t!” Heedless of the venomous bite, I flung myself on it, pinning it under my chest. The thing squirmed and howled through clenched fangs, unable to open its mouth with me on top of it. “Now you’re mine, Creepy.”
Careful to keep the body pinned, I got to my knees. The fur was bristly and greasy under my hands, and I felt my stomach churn. “Done with you now.” The squealing was cut off as I plunged the letter opener through the body with a sickening crunch. The remaining legs twitched and spasmed before finally succumbing.
The door binged cheerfully, marking the return of my coworkers. Kristyn stared at me, and I realized belatedly how it probably looked. The rack of shirts was overturned, the earrings were scattered all over the floor, and one of the CD towers was on its side. And there I was, with a letter opener driven an inch into the linoleum, the telltale remains of the demon parasite already dissolved into nothingness.
The question was plain on her face, and I finally just had to shrug. “Cockroach. Really big cockroach.”
I’m not sure whether she believed me.
