Practical Demonkeeping(9)

“I bade Solomon allow me to bring Catch to justice. I knew my power to be much greater than the demon’s. But Solomon had only the building of the temple by which to judge my powers, and in that example the demon appeared superior. ‘Do what you can,’ he said. ‘If you capture the demon, you may remain on Earth.’

“I found Catch in the great desert, wantonly slaughtering tribes of nomads. When I bound him with my magic, he protested that he had planned to return, for he was enslaved to Solomon by the invocation and could never really escape. He was only having a little sport with the humans, he said. To quiet him, I filled his mouth with sand for the journey back to Jerusalem.

“When I brought Catch to Solomon, the king commanded me to devise a punishment to torment the demon, so that the people of Jerusalem might watch him suffer. I chained Catch to a giant stone outside the palace, then I created a huge bird of prey that swooped on the demon and tore at his liver, which grew back at once, for like the Djinn, the demon was immortal.

“Solomon was pleased with my work. During my absence he had regained his senses somewhat, and thereby his will. I stood before the king awaiting my reward, feeling my powers wane as Solomon’s will returned.

“‘I have promised that you shall never be returned to the netherworld, and you shall not,’ he said. ‘But this demon has put me off of immortals more than somewhat, and I do not wish that you be allowed to roam free. You shall be imprisoned in a jar and cast into the sea. Should the time come when you are set free to walk the Earth again, you shall have no power over the realm of man except as is commanded by my will, which shall be from now to the end of time the goodwill of all men. By this you shall be bound.’

“He had a jar fashioned from lead and marked it on all sides with a silver seal. Before he imprisoned me, Solomon promised that Catch would remain chained to the rock until his screams burned into the king’s soul — so that Solomon might never lose his will or his wisdom again. He said he would then send the demon back to hell and destroy the tablets with the invocations, as well as the great seal. He swore these things to me, as if he believed the fate of the demon meant something to me. I didn’t give a camel’s fart about Catch. Then he gave me a last command and sealed the jar. His soldiers cast the jar into the Red Sea.

“For two thousand years I languished inside the jar, my only comfort a trickle of seawater that seeped in, which I drank with relish, for it tasted of freedom.

“When the jar was finally pulled from the sea by a fisherman, and I was released, I cared nothing about Solomon or Catch, only about my freedom. I have lived as a man would live these last thousand years, bound by Solomon’s will. Of this Solomon spoke truly, but about the demon, he lied.”

The little man paused and refilled his cup in the ocean. Augustus Brine was at a loss. It couldn’t possibly be true. There was nothing to corroborate the story.

“Begging your pardon, Gian Hen Gian, but why is none of this told in the Bible?”

“Editing,” the Djinn said.

“But aren’t you confusing Greek myth with Christian myth? The birds eating the demon’s liver sounds an awful lot like the story of Prometheus.”

“It was my idea. The Greeks were thieves, no better than Solomon.”

Brine considered this for a moment. He was seeing evidence of the supernatural, wasn’t he? Wasn’t this little Arab drinking seawater as he watched, with no apparent ill effects? And even if some of it could be explained by hallucination, he was pretty sure that he hadn’t been the only one to see the strange blue swirls in the store this morning. What if for a moment — just a moment — he took the Arab’s outrageous story for the truth?…

“If this is true, then how do you know, after all this time, that Solomon lied to you? And why tell me about it?”

“Because, Augustus Brine, I knew you would believe. And I know Solomon lied because I can feel the presence of the demon, Catch. And I’m sure that he has come to Pine Cove.”

“Swell,” Brine said.





7


ARRIVAL




Virgil Long backed out from under the hood of the Impala, wiped his hands on his coveralls, and scratched at his four-day growth of beard. He reminded Travis of a fat weasel with the mange.

“So you’re thinking it’s the radiator?” Virgil asked.

“It’s the radiator,” Travis said.

“It might be the whole engine is gone. You were running pretty quiet when you drove in. Not a good sign. Do you have a charge card?”

Virgil was unprecedented in his inability to diagnose specific engine problems. When he was dealing with tourists, his strategy was usually to start replacing things and keep replacing them until he solved the problem or reached the limit on the customer’s credit card, whichever came first.

“It wasn’t running at all when I came in,” Travis protested. “And I don’t have a credit card. It’s the radiator, I promise.”

“Now, son,” Virgil drawled, “I know you think you know what you’re talking about, but I got a certificate from the Ford factory there on the wall that says I’m a master mechanic.” Virgil pointed a fat finger toward the service station’s office. One wall was covered with framed certificates along with a poster of a nude woman sitting on the hood of a Corvette buffing her private parts with a scarf in order to sell motor oil. Virgil had purchased the Master Mechanic certificates from an outfit in New Hampshire: two for five dollars, six for ten dollars, fifteen for twenty. He had gone for the twenty-dollar package. Those who took the time to read the certificates were somewhat surprised to find out that Pine Cove’s only service station and car wash had its own factory-certified snowmobile mechanic. It had never snowed in Pine Cove.

“This is a Chevy,” Travis said.

“Got a certificate for those, too. You probably need new rings. The radiator’s just a symptom, like these broken headlights. You treat the symptom, the disease just gets worse.” Virgil had heard that on a doctor show once and liked the sound of it.

“What will it cost to just fix the radiator?”

Virgil stared deep into the grease spots on the garage floor, as if by reading their patterns and by some mystic mode of divination, petrolmancy perhaps, he would arrive at a price that would not alienate the dark young man but would still assure him an exorbitant hourly rate for his labor.

“Hundred bucks.” It had a nice round ring to it.

“Fine,” Travis said, “Fix it. When can I have it back?”

Virgil consulted the grease spots again, then emerged with a good-ol’-boy smile. “How’s noon sound?”

“Fine,” Travis said. “Is there a pool hall around here — and someplace I can get some breakfast?”

“No pool hall. The Head of the Slug is open down the street. They got a couple of tables.”

“And breakfast?”

“Only thing open this end of town is H.P.’s, a block off Cypress, down from the Slug. But it’s a local’s joint.”

“Is there a problem getting served?”

“No. The menu might throw you for a bit. It — well, you’ll see.”

Travis thanked the mechanic and started off in the direction of H.P.’s, the demon skulking along behind him. As they passed the self-serve car-wash stalls, Travis noticed a tall man of about thirty unloading plastic laundry baskets full of dirty dishes from the bed of an old Ford pickup. He seemed to be having trouble getting quarters to go into the coin box.

Looking at him, Travis said: “You know, Catch, I’ll bet there’s a lot of incest in this town.”

“Probably the only entertainment,” the demon agreed.

The man in the car wash had activated the high-pressure nozzle and was sweeping it back and forth across the baskets of dishes. With each sweep he repeated, “Nobody lives like this. Nobody.”

Some of the overspray caught on the wind and settled over Travis and Catch. For a moment the demon became visible in the spray. “I’m melt-ing,” Catch whined in perfect Wicked Witch of the West pitch.

“Let’s go,” Travis said, moving quickly to avoid more spray. “We need a hundred bucks before noon.”





JENNY




In the two hours since Jenny Masterson had arrived at the cafe she had managed to drop a tray full of glasses, mix up the orders on three tables, fill the saltshakers with sugar and the sugar dispensers with salt, and pour hot coffee on the hands of two customers who had covered their cups to indicate that they’d had enough — a patently stupid gesture on their part, she thought. The worst of it was not that she normally performed her duties flawlessly, which she did. The worst of it was that everyone was so damned understanding about it.

“You’re going through a rough time, honey, it’s okay.”

“Divorce is always hard.”

Their consolations ranged from “too bad you couldn’t work it out” to “he was a worthless drunk anyway, you’re better off without him.”

She’d been separated from Robert exactly four days and everybody in Pine Cove knew about it. And they couldn’t just let it lie. Why didn’t they let her go through the process without running this cloying gauntlet of sympathy? It was as if she had a big red D sewed to her clothing, a signal to the townsfolk to close around her like a hungry amoeba.