Demon Read online

  “Barney McGee....”

  The Sheriff interrupted him with a snort. “That old head-case. You don’t want to believe a word he says. Crazy as a jay-bird. When he’s not drunk as a skunk.”

  He turned to look at the boy in the back. Good looking son of a gun. The eyes were unsettling though. Intense and unnaturally light in that tanned face. Still, probably no harm in him. And if he was a college kid...Rube made a mental note to check with UCLA. Better safe than sorry. Meanwhile....

  “There’s some old Indian ruins up on the ridge,” he said, helpfully. “Might find something of interest to you up there?”

  Coyote unfroze slightly. “Thanks,” he said. “Is there a library in town?”

  “Sure is. Closed for the weekend though. Why?”

  “I’d like to look up some old records.”

  “I got no objection to that. Just leave Lori Morrison alone, is all.”

  Coyote was back to his silent routine.

  “Didn’t think you could be after her body,” Rube said, bluntly. “Not the type. Her mother now,” he smiled at the recollection. “She was a looker in her time. Could have had any man in town. Won the ‘Miss Cactus County Beauty Competition’ when she was just seventeen. Trip to Hollywood. Screen test. The works. Didn’t pan out, of course. Came back after about a year. Married Ted.” He shook his head, as if at the cruelty of Fate. “Nobody from Backwater Ridge ever got famous.”

  “Anything else?” Coyote’s voice shook him out of his reverie.

  “Your choice son. Do your research, stop riling the natives and you and I will get along just fine. But if I see or hear of you being within five miles of Lori Morrison, your feet won’t touch the ground. Do we understand each other?”

  In the mirror, Coyote gave the briefest of brief nods.

  “Fine,” said the Sheriff. “Then let’s go pick up that bike.”

  Marge was clearing tables when they arrived. The Saturday evening rush had already started and the place was heaving. Perry hesitated momentarily and Lori’s heart sank when she saw that Tracey was already installed at a booth in the corner, surrounded by cronies. She had hoped to avoid anybody from school. Washing dishes didn’t fit in with her new-found image of superstar. But it was too late. One of the crowd, a spotty kid called Wayne Maxwell, who’d only been included to make up numbers, shouted to Lori as she came in.

  “Hey, Lori, great audition,” and then “Ow,” as Tracey kicked him under the table.

  “Tracey thinks you were miming,” called Mary-Lou Peters, nastily. Everybody laughed. Lori blushed furiously.

  Marge didn’t like Tracey Barnes. Or her set. Too lippy for her taste. She handed Lori a pile of plates and directed her into the kitchen where Don was struggling to fill twenty orders at once.

  “You’re late,” he said, indicating a mound of dishes the size of Everest. “We’re almost outta cutlery.”

  Lori hung her hold-all on a hook, rolled up her sleeves and pulled on a pair of rubber gloves. Even with the air-conditioning going full blast, the heat in the kitchen was stifling. At least ten degrees hotter than it was outside. And it was like a furnace outside. Three hours. Three hours and she’d be at the movies with Perry. She just hoped her eye-shadow wouldn’t melt off her face before then.

  Miguel Coyote tracked Barney down at the Salvation Army. They’d found him a cot there and got him a job clearing the town gutters of litter. For the first time in years the old man had a bed and a few dollars in his pocket. He invited Miguel for a coffee in the Army canteen.

  “Sure,” said Miguel, “Why not?”

  “My treat,” said Barney, proudly paying for the drinks.

  Miguel spooned sugar into his mug and took a sip.

  “I need a favour, Barney...” he said. “And you’re the only man in town that can help me.”

  Barney, who hadn’t had a friend in years, delighted that anybody should have that much faith in him, flushed with pride and said...

  “Anything I can do, son. Just say the word.”

  Marge looked slightly taken aback when Perry asked if he could take Lori to the late night movies. She knew that he and Tracey Barnes had been an item for some time. She also knew that Lori was carrying a giant sized torch for him. She hoped he wasn’t going to hurt her. Kids could be so cruel. But all she said was...

  “Sure, why not?”

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see Tracey Barnes rising and making her way over. Then Don shouted that table three’s order was ready and she hurried to the hatch to collect the four ‘Saturday night specials’. Southern Fried Chicken and sweet-corn fritters with ‘slaw on the side.

  Tracey pretended to ignore Perry, brushing past him as though on her way to the Ladies room. She was looking great, and she knew it. She’d purposely put on his favourite blouse and a skirt that just covered the top of her thighs, in the sure and certain knowledge that, unless he crawled into a hole, she was bound to bump into him sometime during the course of the evening. There were only so many places to go in Backwater Ridge on a Saturday night.

  She feigned surprise when Perry put out a hand to stop her as she went by.

  “Why Perry,” she said, all malicious smiles. “Fancy seeing you here.”

  Perry knew she was playing games with him, had promised himself he’d let her come to him for a change. But he was only human. And she was looking fantastic. He told her so now.

  “Well, thank you,” she said, waving a hand towards the corner table. “The gang and I are going bowling. What are YOU doing tonight?”

  Perry looked her straight in the eye.

  “I’m taking Lori to the Wes Craven late-show,” he said.

  Tracey dropped the act, her face suddenly thunderous.

  “Why you two timing...” she hissed.

  “What do you care? You’re the one broke our date.”

  Tracey raised her voice. “That didn’t mean I gave you permission to take out any stray dog in town.”

  “Good grief, Tracey,” said Perry, raising his voice to the same level as hers. “What are you so riled about? It’s only Lori.”

  A sudden silence fell as everybody turned to look. Then Perry stormed out and Tracey, honour satisfied, smirked and made her way back to the table and Marge sighed and hoped that Lori hadn’t heard.

  But of course, Lori had. In the kitchen, elbow deep in suds, Perry’s words struck her like a knife in the heart. “Only Lori....”

  A great lump rose in her throat and she squeezed her eyes shut to hold back the tears. “Only Lori....” That said it all.

  She pushed a damp strand of hair away from her forehead. Who was she kidding? Perry wasn’t interested in her. He was just trying to make Tracey jealous. Lori’s brain suddenly boiled over with loathing. Tracey Barnes. How she detested her.

  Outside, the object of her spite clicked her manicured fingers, calling for service. Marge delivering food to another table, gave her a look that could curdle milk.

  “Get you something?” she said.

  “Coffee. Black.”

  Marge brought a cup, plonked it down, filled it with steaming liquid. No please, no thank you. She might look like something from the front cover of a glossy magazine. But this kid needed a lesson in manners.

  In the kitchen Lori fumed silently over the forks. Tracey Barnes. With her long hair and her short skirts and her superior attitude and her rich Daddy. You’d never find Tracey Barnes washing dishes or slinging hash. Tracey Barnes. She wished Tracey Barnes would burn in....

  Tracey’s scream brought the diner to a halt.

  Leaping to her feet, her skirt saturated with scalding coffee, she tried to hold the material away from her legs as she danced around, scattering glasses, knocking chairs flying.

  “Did you see that?” she squealed. “Did you see? The coffee. It just jumped out of my hand.”

  Marge grabbed a pitcher of ice-water from the counter and hurled it over the hysterical teenager.

  “This’ll cool you down,” she s
aid.

  Tracey gasped as the liquid hit her, soaking her from head to foot. Standing in the middle of the diner, hairstyle ruined, red wheals rising on her legendary thighs, she began to wail.

  And Lori, scraping grease off a plate, had a sudden vision of the Dreamcatcher, nestling in her bag not five feet away, where she’d hidden it for safety after Miguel Coyote’s visit.

  And a voice in her head said ‘Comeuppance time’.

  And a smile of triumphant glee spread slowly over her sweating face.

  9

  “Quite a day.”

  Lori is in bed. She is naked under a light throw, the night so steamy that she hasn’t even bothered to put on her pyjamas. He is sitting at the far end, leaning languidly against the bedpost. He has pushed up the bottom of the coverlet. One hand rests on her left ankle. She can feel his palm, cool and smooth against her hot skin. He has taken off the snake-skin jacket, draped it over the end of the bed. In his black linen slacks and black silk shirt, he is almost invisible. But she can smell him. A faint acrid scent, like night flowering jasmine.

  “Yes indeed,” he says. “Quite a day.” There is a smile in his voice. He is obviously delighted with himself. “The lead role in ‘Rainbow’,” he goes on, “a date with the heart-throb next door and a bit of ‘own back’ on the dread Tracey Barnes.” He sniggers. “I wish you could have seen her, standing there with her hair hanging down like orange string and her white skirt covered in coffee stains.”

  Lori can’t suppress a grin.

  “I heard her,” she says.

  “So did half the town.”

  He laughs, throwing back his head, closing his dark eyes in the dark room. The moon, shining through the window, glints off the scorpion tie-pin.

  “You’ve also lost five pounds,” he says, smugly.

  “Five pounds? In one day? That’s not possible.”

  Lori feels her stomach. It does feel flatter. But five pounds?

  “Anything is possible, Lori,” he says. “If you believe it enough. If you WANT it enough.”

  “Then why didn’t I get a proper kiss?” says Lori.

  The movie was pure Wes Craven. Horrific but also horrifically funny. Lori had used the excuse of the more gross bits – like the guy’s head exploding, or the part where the priest’s guts had fallen out – to turn her face into Perry’s chest, pretending she was more spooked than she was, drinking in the warm male smell of him in the obscurity of the back row.

  Perry had put his arm round her. Bliss. Protecting her. A novelty for him. Tracey would have been hooting and shouting with the rest of the mob. Nothing much spooked Tracey.

  Afterwards, driving home in the moonlight, parking at the front gate, he had leaned over to kiss Lori ‘goodnight’. She had looked so vulnerable, so sweet. And in the half-light, she was almost pretty, the arc of the street lamp carving shadows under her cheekbones, dropping tiny iridescent pin-points into her dilated pupils. As if she had stars in her eyes.

  Lori had frozen, torn between desire and terror. Here it comes, she thought, closing her eyes. Then his lips brushed her cheek and she opened them again.

  ‘Only Lori’ she thought to herself. And she had leapt out of the car and rushed up the path and into the house, slamming the door behind her.

  “How’d it go?” said Marge, coming out of the front room.

  “I hope Tracey Barnes burns in Hell,” said Lori, her eyes glittering with malice in the darkened hallway.

  “Lori Morrison,” Marge sounded shocked. “You’ll never get to Heaven.”

  “Who cares,” said Lori, rushing up the stairs and into her room.

  “A girl has her pride,” she says now. “I don’t want to be kissed by someone who’s pretending I’m someone else.”

  “Lori, Lori, Lori,” he says. “When are you going to start believing in yourself? Perry wanted to kiss you. He was just too much of a gentleman to do it on a first date.” He rubs her ankle bone gently with his thumb. A little shiver runs up her leg.

  “Relax, Lori,” he says, “nobody’s going to bite you. You have to learn to let life in. Otherwise it’s just going to pass you by.”

  Marge stood still, listening to Lori sobbing quietly to herself upstairs.

  “Poor kid,” she thought, and then “hormones”, silently thanking her lucky stars that she’d forgotten what it was like to be at the mercy of them.

  But there’d been a time...another time...another place...it seemed a century ago.

  She padded back into the lounge from where she’d seen Lori and Perry drive up, watched from the window as he leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. What was she turning into? One of those narrow-minded, home-town, purse-lipped old biddies who spied on people through their front curtains? Surely not? Not Marge Mason, as was. Marge Mason, ex Miss Cactus County.

  She went to the sideboard and opened the top drawer. Where had she put it? She hadn’t looked at it in an age, didn’t even know why she kept it. She rootled in the back among the accumulated bits and bobs. There it was, hidden under the string and the super-glue, in the brown envelope, where she’d stowed it. First the pieces, picking them up from the floor after she’d ripped it up in rage. Afterwards, the repaired image, crossed over with sellotape to hold it together. She opened the flap and slid the photo out and seventeen years dropped away. Seventeen long years of waiting tables and dealing with Ted. She had her kids...sure...but...

  Hormones.

  Marge was sure glad that hers had quietened down.

  “Quite a day,” he says for the third time. “Yes indeed. And that’s just the beginning. Now that the ball’s rolling there’ll be no stopping us.”

  “What’s the catch?” says Lori.

  “I don’t get you.”

  “The catch,” says Lori. “You’re a Dreamcatcher. Right? This is the dream. Right? So, what’s the catch?”

  He snorts, highly diverted. “Ho Ho,” he says. “Witty as well as pretty.

  “I’m not pretty, and you know it.”

  “Oh but you are, Lori. You’re beautiful.” He cocks his head and looks at her intently, devouring her with his strange yellow eyes. The jasmine smell is strong in her nostrils. The heat of the night envelops her like a shroud. “You just don’t know it yet.”

  “And when will I know it?”

  “Soon. Very soon. This was just day one. You and I are going places. Records. Road tours. Television. Movies. The sky’s the limit, Lori. Today Dorothy, tomorrow the world.”

  “Why?” says Lori. “Why me?”

  “Because you need it so badly,” he says. “I’m here in answer to your prayers. Like your Knight in Shining Armour.”

  “Or the Devil in disguise.” says Lori.

  There is a long, pregnant silence. Lori breaks it first. When she speaks there is a shake in her voice.

  “Are we making some kind of deal here?”

  “Only if you want to.”

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  “Nothing is for nothing, Lori. Fame and fortune, size eight and Perry thrown in for good measure. You can have it. You can have anything you want. But there’s a price.”

  “This is ridiculous,” says Lori. “You’re not real. This is just a dream. Any minute now I’m going to wake up.”

  “In that case, what are you afraid of?” he says, silkily and he smiles. His teeth are very white, very even in the wide sensuous mouth. The canines, she notes, are ever so slightly pointed.

  “What about the biker?” she says. “Where does he come in?”

  He stiffens, his hand gripping her ankle a bit more tightly, almost to the point of pain.

  “Let me worry about the biker,” he says. His voice has taken on an nasty edge. Vicious. “It’s make up your mind time, Lori,” he says. “You have to decide for yourself. I can’t persuade you against your will. Them’s the rules.”

  “Fame and fortune, size eight and Perry thrown in for good measure?” says Lori.

  “If that’s what you want.”
/>
  “That’s what I want,” says Lori. “Though not necessarily in that order. What do YOU want?”

  “Three guesses.”

  “Not...oh God...it’s too corny. Not...my soul?”

  “Got it in one.”

  “What do you want it for?” Lori asks. “What will you do with it?”

  “What do YOU want it for?” he answers her question with a question. “What will YOU do with it? If you don’t give it to me.”

  Lori is stumped. She hasn’t ever thought about her soul before. What would she do with it? What has she ever done with it? Does it even exist? Would she miss it if it was gone? She thinks of what he’s offering. She thinks of the alternative. She thinks this is only a dream. She thinks, in that case, what does it matter?

  “I don’t have to sign anything, do I,” she says, nervously.

  “Of course not,” he reassures her. “But I’ll need a little something to seal the bargain.”

  He leans towards her, the full lips curled in a smile. She can feel the weight of his body, the muscles in his chest and arms, hard and taut. His face comes closer and closer, the smell of jasmine almost overpowering now. She feels slightly faint, as though she’s about to pass out. And then he starts to whine, quietly at first, more of a hum, but rising to a high thin shriek. It sets her teeth on edge. The sound and the scent and the dark rimmed yellow eyes staring. She lies very still. Powerless. Hypnotised. Like a rabbit caught in a car’s headlights.

  The noise gets louder, harsher, vibrating her eardrums, making her head swim. She feels nauseous. But she can’t move. His narrow, feral, sensuously handsome face is only an inch away now. She has a sudden flash of something horrible bearing down on her. Teeth. Claws. Cloven hooves. And dozens of eyes, covering a bulbous spider’s head.

  Only a flash. Then it is gone. It’s just him. Heavy. She can’t breathe.

  At the last moment, when it seems their mouths are about to connect, he turns his face into the curve between her shoulder and her neck and she feels a sudden stinging pain just below her ear.