Tales from the Crypt - Demon Knight (30 page)

Now she was crawling across the floor toward the stairway. The smoke upstairs had grown to a dense white fog cut by ballooning swirls of more ominous colors, browns and blacks and greens. With her lips sucking air a fraction of an inch above the carpet, she was relying on the fire safety methods taught in elementary school to keep her from choking to death. It was working fairly well. At the head of the stairs, she tensed all her muscles and became a surfboard, riding down the steps on her stomach. At the bottom she became a snake again, concerned with only one thing: escape. No one was left behind to be saved; the whole world waited for her beyond these burning walls.

She had smeared herself heavily with Brayker’s dead blood. The instinct made little sense to her but she had obeyed it anyway. The orb of the key was full to the point of leaking from its primitive seams. The salty stench of blood was a cloud hovering wherever she moved, wherever she breathed, but she welcomed it. Brayker had lived a long, long life before he died, and she was determined never to die young.

She crawled to the space where the front desk had once stood. Oddly, perhaps fatefully, the fire in this area had not done much damage before moving on. She cut to the right where the smoke was thinnest, rising up into a troglodyte posture, coughing into her hand. The bathroom, where she had seen the sign so strangely changed to include ghouls, still advertised its employees-only message. She pushed the door open and found the room free of smoke. With a grateful breath she raised up to her full height. The mirror above the sink caught her eye: a woman made of smeary blood and wild gray hair looked back at her. To her left was the bathtub, to her right the toilet. Above it was a small window with a pane of bumpy green glass. Could she fit through it? She knew now that she could do all manner of extraordinary things.

She was standing on the toilet when the door crashed open so hard the upper hinge broke in two and the whole door bent to the floor. The Salesman tromped over it and laughed at her. For this newest occasion he had manufactured himself a fireman’s rubberized coat and pants and a shiny yellow fireman’s hat with a long plastic bill in the front, and a long plastic bill in the back. He lifted a big white bullhorn to his lips and brayed madly into it.

“May I have your attention please! The premises are on fire. Repeat, the premises are on fire. Everyone on the premises is directed to panic.”

She dug her fingernails under the metal frame of the window and tried to pull it open. Flakes of rust sifted down. She stabbed at the pane with the key but it only ricocheted off; the glass had a wire mesh embedded inside.

“Give us a hug,” the Salesman bawled, and put his arms around her waist.

Immediately he screamed and jumped away, flapping his hands, slapping at his smoking costume. “You slut!” he shouted. “You bloody, bleeding
slut!”

He lurched to the bathtub and ripped the shower curtain down with one tremendous yank. Jeryline whipped her head to the left, the right. To the right was only a blank wall made of little blue ceramic tiles that had split and cracked under the weight of years. To her left, the open doorway, where thin drifts of smoke ambled past. She thrust the key out, menaced him with it, knowing that if a camera crew burst in and saw her carefully tiptoeing back and forth on the creaking lid of the toilet like this, she would have to demand that her face be computered out when it was televised.

The Salesman bundled the top and bottom of the shower curtain in his fists to form a parachute of sorts. He whipped it over Jeryline’s head with all the ease of a cowpoke snagging a dogie, and jerked her off balance. She slammed down on the toilet. Her teeth clicked together on the tip of her tongue and she tasted blood, more blood, it seemed the night was filled with blood. He twisted her inside the curtain and manhandled her to the bathtub. Her calves connected with old, cold porcelain and she fell backwards into the tub.

He cranked the water on. The crusty old shower head was filled with flakes of lime and debris but cold water shot out all the same. “First we washa da blood off,” he sang out, “and then we empty da key out.” He took her hand that held the key and maneuvered her fingers across the sides of the orb, forcing it open. Fresh crimson blood seeped out.

“No!”
Jeryline screamed, furiously kicking and fighting him. She dragged her captive hand downward and bit into his fingers. He hollered and his grip loosened momentarily. She thought of Brayker, what Silas Brayker would do right now, how he had lived so long on the run with only his stamina and his wits to keep him a step away from surrendering the key.

“Damn you,” the Salesman growled. Water dripped from his hat as he battled her. “Why don’t you people ever just give up?”

She bit his fingers again. He roared. Knowledge, a hint of something that could not have come from her own mind, blossomed tentatively inside her brain. There was a way out of this. There was a way so simple the Salesman would never dream of it, because the Salesman only thought in terms of what he wanted, and the men and women who had dodged him for two thousand years thought in terms of how much he should have to pay. It was a price he would never accept: total surrender.

She mashed her lips to the orb and sucked a huge mouthful of Brayker’s warm blood into her mouth, and clamped her teeth and lips over the secret. She quit struggling. Grunting as he worked, the Salesman used her hand to shield himself from the power of the living key. When he had cleaned it under the spray of water he tore it out of her hand and let her fall away.

He held it up high, beaming with pleasure and pride. “This is totally cool, Jeryline,” he said. “This is like, the best ever.” He grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her out of the tub. “We’re talking major career move here, Jerry. I don’t want you to feel bad for losing the key, though. Follow me.”

He hauled her along as he left the restroom. The broken door scraped painfully under her back. Where the smoke grew thick enough to sting her eyes she was finally able to stand. Chuckling, whooping with joy, the Salesman towed her through the gaping blowhole that had been the front entrance, out across the destruction that had been a porch and a car, and under the soggy black sky.

“Finally!” he roared at the sky. “Ten thousand blind alleys! A million miles on the road. Jerks and idiots and assholes galore! But now it is MINE!”

He eyed Jeryline, panting. “Party time,” he said. “Mind if I slip into something that is more after my own style?”

He raised his hands to the sky. A flash of lightning popped out of the clouds and touched him. For a moment he was engulfed in powdery blue fire. Then chunks of his body split and began to fall away like husks. Jeryline staggered backward a step. Underneath his many sets of clothes, underneath his very skin, was a being of ugly, boiling, orange light.

This new thing stepped close to her. “Tell me now,” he said—and yep, it was the trusty old voice of the Salesman—“looking at me like this, don’t you get a little hot?’’

She offered him a toothful grin. Blood leaked between her teeth. His expression went from sheer glee to sheer horror. “Grglebrgle,’’ she hummed through her nose, and with every bit of her strength spit all of Brayker’s blood in his face.

It would have been disappointing, she later reflected, if he had simply melted like the wicked witch. It would have been disappointing if he had exploded like an overloaded boiler. It would have been disappointing if he had burst apart into a hundred little demons with squeaky voices that bumbled about in terror and then ran away. Instead of those options he chose the one most suiting his personality, the one that told her without doubt that he would be back soon, and that he would be looking for her.

He rolled up like a cheap windowshade. The key dropped in the mud. Distantly, a touch of orange streaked across the sky, a nomad asteroid, she supposed, or the Salesman going back to the center of the cosmos to regroup and make new plans.

Or, she thought with a smile, it was Brayker’s soul, free at last, free to live, free to love, free to sleep, from now until forever.

Epilogue

Four Days Later
Terre Haute, Indiana

T
he bus station just off Wabash Avenue was a joke, the hard little seats of the waiting area were scratched and gouged and uncomfortable. Jeryline had been waiting for the next connecting bus for longer than anyone should have to wait. She checked her watch, and opened the bus schedule in her hand. She had an aunt in Virginia who would let her stay in her home until she got back on her feet. It wasn’t much of an offer, but the best Jeryline could drum up.

The bus was late. New Mexico was hot, but at least there it was a dry kind of heat. Here, in the armpit of Indiana, it was like living in a sauna. Virginia weather was probably the same, so she told herself she had better get used to it.

Minutes passed. Jeryline thought of the past, thought of the future. Before leaving the burning Mission Inn, she had refilled the orb with Brayker’s cold, jellied blood. It was the hardest thing she had ever been forced to do, but there had been no choice involved. You either does it, she knew, or you doesn’t. And so she did.

Now she stood, restless, trying to shove the memories from her mind, and wandered over to the dirty little water fountain around the corner from the empty gumball machine again, for lack of anything else to do. Warm chlorine mixed with a trace of water squirted feebly out, and she bathed her tongue with it, not daring to swallow and be dead soon.

Something hard and small rammed into her spine from behind. She jerked upright and whirled, a thousand dreadful thoughts zipping through her mind. But it was only a big ugly bastard with a lot of acne scars on his greasy face. “Your purse,” he rasped. “Don’t get brave and scream or nothing. Just give me the purse.”

“I’m not carrying a purse,” she said.

“Then money. Give me your money.”

“All I’ve got is a couple bucks.”

He looked her over. “You know, you ain’t the ugliest broad I’ve ever seen. Go into the bathroom and keep your mouth shut, cause I’m right behind you.”

Jeryline closed her eyes, weary of this. “Hey, big shot?” she said. “You’re right about that.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Right about what?”

“I ain’t the ugliest broad you’ve ever seen. But I’m the last broad you’re ever going to see.”

He frowned. “Huh?”

She grabbed the back of his head and smashed his face against the steel rim of the water fountain. “Peek-a-boo,” she said, raising him, and gouged his eyes out with two fingers of the same hand, the old Three Stooges style. He spasmed backward and rolled on the floor pawing at his face and bellowing.

She patted her pocket before moving on. The key was there. A smoking old wreck of a bus was now idling in the rectangle of shade behind the depot. She checked her ticket, checked the number of the bus, and stepped up. As she showed her ticket someone stepped up behind her, crowding her forward. She turned instinctively, hauling the key halfway out of her pocket before she even realized she had done it.

The man was a Black, well-dressed business-type. He glanced down at her hand, glanced in her eyes, and stepped back down to the ground. “Catch you later,” he said, and though it may have been the hazy midwestern sun, may have been a trick of the glare through the windows of the bus, his eyes seemed to glow inside, a subdued, bestial red that shone in his eyes before he turned away.

Jeryline found an empty seat. A teenage boy in the seat ahead glanced back at her, turned back to his business, then glanced again. “Wow,” he said. “Neat tattoo!”

Jeryline curled her hand. “Thanks.”

“No, really! I’d like one just like it, astrology stuff, when I get older. How much did it cost you?”

She smiled at his innocence. “It cost me a lot,” she said. “It cost me more than you could ever know.”

He scowled at her, disbelieving, turned away, and got involved in other things.

Which was just fine with her.

Author’s Final Interlude

by
T. C. Keeper

That’s about the size of it, loyal Cryptoids. I just faxed a copy of the manuscript to a team of top-notch editors at Pocket Books in New York City. I’ve heard they get off on slashing things here and there, hacking out big chunks, tearing writers’ hearts out. Who better to understand me? And I figure that since Pocket has a kangaroo for a logo, they’ll get things hopping. Hah!

While I wait for a reply, here is an update.

Wormwood is, of course, a ghost town now, and will be forever. The Mission Inn burned to the ground, leaving only unanswered questions for the authorities of New Mexico. They found nine charbroiled skeletons but could only identify eight: Wanda, Cordelia, Sheriff Tupper, Deputy Martel, Uncle Willie, Roach, Wally Enfield, and Danny Long. The ninth one, that of Silas Brayker, had the coroner mystified. The bones, he said at the inquest, were those of a man almost one hundred years old. No one could imagine who it might have been.

The remains of Silas Brayker were quietly buried in a pauper’s grave in Junction City, which was marked only with a small cement cross. Several years later the caretaker found an old military medal hanging from it by a faded purple ribbon. He checked the library and found that it was a meritorious service medal from World War One. Rather than pawn it or sell it, he tucked it into his wallet, and on every Memorial Day since has draped it there again.

In the meantime, Jeryline Bascombe wanders from town to town, job to job, hiding from the law and the inevitable appearance of the next Salesman. She does not know when the stars on her palm will shift again, but she knows they will, and on that day she will face Brayker’s fate as bravely as he did.

Wait. The fax is beeping. Something’s humming. Now a sheet of paper is slowly reeling out. It says, it says . . .

To: T. C. Keeper

From: The Editors. Pocket Books

Dear Mr. Keeper: The only way you will publish this ghastly book is over our dead bodies. The only way it will become a movie is if you kill every producer and director in Hollywood.