Tales from the Crypt - Demon Knight (13 page)

Nothing.

She was breathing as quietly through her open mouth as she could, needing more oxygen but not daring to take it, torn between a future of wildly scooping out a hole in the dirt in which to hide or jumping up in the dark and trying to make it to the trap door. No longer could she convince herself that monsters do not exist. They were real and they were here because Brayker had brought them. The last survivors of Wormwood would all be dead by morning.

A gentle puff of dust struck the top of her hand. She clenched her teeth together to keep from screaming. Tiny tentacles tickled her knuckles; a cold nose pressed against her little finger. Unable to hold on any longer, she whipped to the side and tried to gouge the Chesterfield into the creature’s face.

It worked. The cigarette exploded into a starburst of orange sparks. Irene’s cat let out a high-pitched squeal and jumped on Jeryline’s chest, skittered her way up to the top of her head, and stood on all fours with her claws hooked into Jeryline’s scalp. Before her mind could decode what had happened, Jeryline let out a crazy screech and batted the cat away, simultaneously jumping to her feet. The top of her head thunked hard against a floor joist and she dropped down again, dazed and finally understanding. She slumped back against the brick wall with her head bruised and bloody, and let her eyes fall shut.

Just the cat, she was thinking. Just the fucking cat. In the horror movies it was funny when everybody went apeshit and the monster turned out to be the cat. It was the oldest trick in the book, a cliché, the sure mark of a screenwriter needing a vacation. But it was real here, the cat had scared
years
out of her life, and she did not know if she should scoop Cleo up and hug her, or scoop her up and smash her brains out against the wall, the terrorizing little black bitch.

Instead she set about lighting the candle again, but her shaking hands botched the job four times before she got it going.

9

W
ally Enfield was actually two people on this bleak night at the Mission Inn: the happiest man on earth and the most frustrated man on earth. After more than a year of secretly adoring Cordelia, of opening doors for her and offering chairs to her, of hauling a breakfast tray upstairs for her when she had worked too hard and not gotten enough sleep—after a year of this, she had finally noticed him as more than just scrawny, comical Wally Enfield, the boarder here who happened to work at the post office up in Junction City until getting fired today. No, she now knew the depth of his love. She would abandon prostitution, marry him; they would buy a house someplace, any place, that wasn’t Wormwood. Wally could have left Wormwood a long time ago, but he had sacrificed his happiness in order to be with Cordelia. And now, presto! He shoots a demon and becomes her hero. Why hadn’t he thought of it years ago?

Then the frustration intrudes: they were in love, sheer bliss awaited, but fate had pushed the HOLD button on the telephone of life, happiness was delayed until the boardinghouse was no longer besieged by demons. Demons! And everybody thought Romeo and Juliet were star-crossed lovers, the pansies.

He and Cordelia were sitting together on the carpeted steps that led upstairs, ready to bolt upwards if things got sticky again. Wally was holding her large hands in his clammy, smaller hands, inhaling the glory of her perfume, knowing that at last he had earned the key to the secrets of her womanhood. Nearly swooning, he said, “I wonder what time it is.”

She kissed him lightly on the tip of his nose. “You’ve got a watch on, silly.” She lifted his wrist, cocking her head to see. “Just barely past midnight, if this guy on the dial is pointing right. That’s not a Mickey Mouse watch, is it?”

He shook his head. “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. The little guy on the second hand is Skeleton They’re enemies.”

She stared at him uneasily, then smiled. “You’d make a great father someday, Wally.”

He giggled. “You’d make a great mother, too.”

They both were seized by a spasm of laughter. Just as Wally was ready to either quit laughing or upchuck, a shadow fell over them, and he looked up.

Roach. With his muscles stuffed inside a greasy T-shirt he looked like a short-order cook at a biker bar. He inspected Wally up and down, snorted, and focused on Cordelia. “You and me got to talk,” he said.

Wally lifted his butt up and planted it on a higher step. “I hope you’re ashamed of yourself,” he chided Roach. “Abandoning Cordelia like that.”

Roach hiked an eyebrow up one notch. “Not particularly, no.” He glanced at Cordelia, and winked. “So Wally,” he went on, “I’m getting out of here. And guess who’s going to help me?”

Cordelia shook her head. “No way, buster.”

“Fuck you,” he snarled. “I’m trying to talk to my friend Wally here.”

Wally rose up. “You watch your mouth in front of her!”

“Watch this,” Roach grunted, and took two fistfuls of Wally’s shirt. “You don’t fuck with me, you little toad. You might want to die here, but I don’t. Brayker says the long tall dude wants that key, and I say we’re going to give it to him.”

Cordelia was on her feet now. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble already? Can’t you just leave a body alone?”

He eyed her with fake indignation. “Excuse me, but this is man-to-man between pals.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Oh, he’s not your pal, Roach. Assholes don’t have friends at all. And you are most definitely an asshole.”

He released Wally. One hand snapped out and clamped around her wrist. “We got a few last details to work out, Cordy. You come with me.”

He marched up the steps, towing her. “Excuse us, Wally old boy. That’s a good sport.”

Wally raised a finger, opened his mouth, looked down at his hands, made fists of them. He took one strong step up to follow, wavered on the second, sat down on the third, and propped his chin on his hands.

“Son of a bitch,” he murmured. He glanced down and saw that Irene, seated at the desk, was looking up at him. “Son of a bitch!” he screamed. “I’ll kill him!”

Irene yawned. “Take a Valium, Wally. Better yet, take two.”

He covered his face with his hands and groaned.

Roach twisted the knob and kicked the door open, hit the light switch with his elbow, and pushed Cordelia across the room. She pitched onto the bed and bounced a few times, then sat up.

He crushed the door shut and aimed a shaking finger at her. “Looky here, bitch. You go around telling people I went chicken-shit out there, and pretty soon the whole town’s gonna believe it.”

She closed her eyes. “What town?”

“You nevermind that, Cordy. You can screw Beaver Cleaver down there all night and all day for what I care, but don’t you be telling people I’m chicken-shit.”

“What people?”

He took a step toward her. “Everybody I know, that’s who. I got a reputation and it don’t involve the word chicken-shit.”

“Actually,” she said, “chicken-shit is two words. Chicken, which you are, and shit, which you is.”

He crossed the little room in two rapid steps, cocking his arm. Before she could duck, he swiped his knuckles across her face in a vicious backhand that sent her head crashing against the wall. Two of her framed pictures jumped off their nails and slid noisily to the floor. “Don’t you fuck with me!” he howled in her face. His anger had caused a case of deodorant breakdown, and the smell drifting off him was thick and ugly. “You save your fucking for Beaver Cleaver down there, if he’s even got a dick you can find without a microscope. You ain’t nothing but a two-dollar whore and he ain’t nothing but another paying customer.”

Cordelia touched a finger to a corner of her mouth: blood came away with it. “Get out,” she said tonelessly. “I’m tired of you.”

He eyed her, then the room, maybe searching for something to throw or break. In the end he flapped his lips to imitate a fart, shuffled around, made the sound again, hauled the door open and stood there, then went out.

Cordelia waited, listening. His feet thumped satisfactorily down the stairs, perhaps stopping at Wally’s perch, but no arguing voices rose up, just Roach’s laughter. Cordelia sank onto the bed while tears tried to rise hotly into her eyes, and begged those tears to go away. None of this was new to her: over the years she had fallen for a dozen guys, hoped beyond hope that they would love her in return, and put an end to her humiliating career with a vow of marriage. Roach was only the latest in a string of broken dreams.

She was dabbing at her nose with a corner of the bedsheet, trying to prepare herself for Wally, when a voice drifted into her ears. She frowned, shook her head, got to her feet, and listened hard.

Poor Cordelia . .
.

She pressed a hand between her breasts, her eyes widening. Somebody was playing a guitar nearby, was serenading her.

It seems downright criminal to treat such a pretty girl that way. Oh, did I say pretty? I should have said beautiful!

The voice was coming through the window, had to be, as if Wally were hanging upside down with his heels hooked into the gutter overhead, singing while playing a Spanish guitar. Could it be? Was he so madly in love, and so acrobatic? She thought not.

You are so beautiful to me, Cordelia .
. .

She went to the window, used her thumb to push up the little brass hook that kept it shut, and spread it apart.

The man whom Brayker had been calling the Salesman was standing below in the rain, wearing a jeweled sombrero, an exotic white shirt, and brown leather pants with sequins sewn down the seams. His guitar was glistening with raindrops, and he gently strummed it as he gazed up at her. By some trick of the night he was surrounded by an aura of pale blue, singing to her from an oval of light.

Poor Cordelia . . .

His face seemed twisted with grief, his glistening eyes full with tears of pain for her.

How you have suffered . . .

“I have,” she said, leaning out. “I have.”

I know .
. .
you are too beautiful. No one understands . . .

She pulled in a breath but it caught in her throat. “Wally does,” she whispered.

And so have all the others, Cordelia, and they have murdered your heart. They thought you were a whore. That is a terrible word to use on someone who is really just a sad little girl looking for love, isn’t it?

Twin tears dropped down her cheeks in unison. The Salesman was right: Wally would pretend to love her for a few weeks and drop her. Every man before him had done the same thing, and all for a couple freebies. Ripped her soul to shreds, just for some freebies.

The Salesman’s voice was barely a whisper.
I promise you my love forever,
he said, and put his guitar on the ground.

A moment later he was scaling the gutter pipe as lightly and noiselessly as an angel. Rather than lean in through the window, he motioned her to lean out, which she did.

He stroked her hair. “Cordelia. My love. I have come for you at last.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, weeping with joy.

His arms enfolded her. Their eyes locked.

He kissed her long and hard.

Wally jumped up when Roach clumped past him on the stairway. Roach grinned at him. “She’s all yours, pal. Hope you like sloppy seconds. Hah!”

Wally, who had a hundred things to say to the bastard, a hundred imagined karate chops to kill him, wound up saying and doing nothing at all. Roach laughed as he walked out of sight, while Wally performed a slow burn. The day would come soon, when he would show Roach—and everybody else—the real man that was hidden inside his bony little body. Already he had saved a life and won the girl of his dreams. He only hoped the others here who had seen him slay the demon, would shrug off his marksmanship to pure beginner’s luck. For today, he had to keep being Wally Enfield. In a few days they would all know his power, especially those dumb fucks at the post office.

He turned to go upstairs, but hesitated. Of course Roach had not been up there long enough to abuse her body, though quite surely long enough to abuse her mind. Probably told a batch of lies about Wally, told her Wally was impotent or queer or a deserter from the Marines, something like that. So if Wally went barging up right now she might turn on him, abandon her admiration, wreck his plans for marriage, point out that he was small and skinny and was getting bald real fast.

He turned to go back down, stopped and chewed on his lower lip for a trace of time, turned around again. What had Roach said to Cordelia, what secrets had he exposed? Wally bought a Penthouse magazine every so often at the cigar shop in Avery, but who could know that? He had once run an ad in the Junction City newspaper, one of those personal ones where you try to get women to date you, but he had used a post office box for
that
fiasco. So, then, what?

Maybe nothing. Maybe Roach had just been begging her for another chance; she was a fine catch in the elusive ocean of women. If so, she had rejected Roach, and therefore aroused his anger. Wally had triumphed over Roach again.

He took an upward step, stopped, and turned. What if Cordelia had locked her door . . . not locked it against Roach, but against
him.
Maybe she—

“Make up your goddamn mind!”
Irene shrieked downstairs at the top of her lungs.

Wally charged up the stairs. At Cordelia’s door he knocked softly, waited, gritted his teeth almost hard enough to break them, knocked harder.

No reply. Roach had murdered her.

He pounded the door, beginning to sweat, waited, then gathered his courage and opened it himself, ready to see either Cordelia hating him, or Cordelia dead. Both would be equally catastrophic.

He eased his head inside. The light was off, but he could see against the backdrop of the window that she was standing there looking out into the night.

His voice was husky and dry when he spoke: “Cordelia?”

She said nothing. The storm overhead seemed to be abating, by the sound of it, but lightning still flashed and popped in the distance.

“C-c-Cordy? Can I call you that now? I won’t if you don’t like it.”