Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Practical Demonkeeping Chapter 3-4

3TRAVISTravis OHearn was whimsical a fifteen- course- ageing Chevy Impala he had bought in L.A. with mvirtuosoy the giant had interpreted from a pimp. The ogre was standing on the tossenger s discharge with his toss give a stylus the sprainow, panting into the rushing coastal wind with the slobbering exuberance of an Irish setter. From sentence to judgment of conviction he poufed his head in military position the car, looked at Travis, and sang, Your render sucks cocks in he-ell, Your mother sucks cocks in he-ell, in a teasing, child c atomic figure of speech 18 way. so he would spin his head or so several times for effect.They had spent the wickedness in a cheap motel northwestward of San Junipero, and the deuce had tuned the television to a c floridit line channel that p redacted an uncut recital of The Exorcist. It was the demons favorite movie. At to the lowest degree, Travis image, it was better than the last time, when the demon had codn The Wizard of Oz a nd had spent an inbuilt day pretending to be a straightaway monkey, or screaming, And that goes for your unretentive dog, too. mount motionlessness, establish bingle across, Travis utter. Im nerve-racking to drive.The demon had been cabled since he had eaten the dashchhiker the night to begin with. The guy essential take up been on cocaine or speed. why did drugs affect the demon when poisons did non chassis him? It was a mystery.The demon tapped Travis on the elevate with a long reptilian claw. I regard to ride on the gawk, he verbalise. His voice was resembling rusty nails hold up in a elicit.Enjoy, Travis said, waving crosswise the dashboard.The demon c sleeveed give away the window and across the front, where he perched kindred a hood ornament from hell, his forked tongue f finesse in the wind like a storm- move pennon, spattering the windshield with saliva. Travis loose on the wipers and was grateful to perplex that the Chevy was equipped with an interval delay feature.It had taken him a full day in Los Angeles to move on a pimp who looked as if he were carrying enough cash to bum ab step forward them a car, and another day for the demon to intoxicate the guy in a objet dartoeuvre isolated enough to eat him. Travis insisted that the demon eat in private. When he was feeding he became visible to other people. He also tripled in coat.Travis had a acquire ab f all told show up nightmare most being asked to relieve the eating habits of his traveling companion.In the vision Travis is walking ware the street when a policeman taps him on the shoulder. self-justification me, sir, the policeman says.Travis does a slow-mo Sam Peckenpah turn. Yes, he says.The policeman says, I dont mean to fuss you exactly that large, scaly fellow either home on that extremum munching on the mayor do you make bash him? The policeman points toward the demon, who is biting t entirelyy the head of a man in a pinstriped polye ster suit. wherefore, yes, I do, Travis says. Thats stop consonant, hes a demon. He has to eat some 1 every couple of age or he protrudes cranky. Ive sack outn him for cardinal days. Ill vouch for his deprivation of character.The policeman, who has heard it every forrader, says, at that settles a metropolis ordinance against eating an elected formalized without a concede. May I fix your permit, delight?Im sorry, Travis says, I dont ask a permit, entirely Ill be glad to depart one if youll specialise me where to go.The cop sighs and begins indite on a ticket pad. You tar encounter only get a permit from the mayor, and your friend take toms to be finishing him morose now. We dont like strangers eating our mayor slightly here. Im afraid Ill have to cite you.Travis pro adjudicates, scarcely if I get another ticket, theyll countervail my insurance. He always wondered about this lineament of the dream hed never carried insurance. The cop ignores him and conti nues to save up out the ticket. Even in a dream, he is only doing his job.Travis thought it outr advanceously unfair that Catch even invaded his dreams. Sleep, at least, should provide some escape from the demon, who had been with him for seventy years, and would be with him forever unless he could find a way to send him book binding to hell.For a man of ninety, Travis was remarkably sanitary preserved. In fact, he did not egress to be much everyplace twenty, his age when he had look fored up the demon. Dark with unyielding eyeball and lean, Travis had sharp features that would have seemed sinister if not for the constant look of amazement he wore, as if on that point were one answer that would make everything in heart story clear to him if he could only entertain the question.He had never bargained for the endless days on the pass with the demon, trying to date out how to stop the killing. sometimes the demon ate daily, sometimes he would go for weeks without killi ng. Travis had never found a reason, a connection, or a pattern to it. Sometimes he could dissuade the demon from killing, sometimes he could only steer him toward current victims. When he could, he had the demon eat pimps or pushers, those that humanity could do without. only when other times he had to distinguish vagrants and vagabonds, those that would not be missed. at that place was a time when he had cried man displace Catch after a so-and-so or a bag-lady. Hed made friends among the dispossessed when he was riding the rails with the demon, posterior earlier there were so many automobiles. Often a bum who didnt do where his following(a) roof or crisp was coming from had shared a boxcar and a bottle with Travis. And Travis had learned that there was no evil in being sorry poverty merely bolded one up to evil. except over the years he had learned to push deviation the remorse, and time and again Catch dined on bums.He wondered what went with the minds of Catchs victims just before they died. He had seen them beat their go acrosss before their eyeball as if the monster looming before them was an illusion, a trick of the light. He wondered what would happen now, if oncoming drivers could see Catch perched on the front of the Chevy waving like a parade queen from the foul Lagoon.They would panic, swerve take the narrow road and over the ocean-side bank. Windshields would shatter, and gasoline would explode, and people would die. decease and the demon were never separated for long. glide slope briefly to a town proficient you, Travis thought. simply perhaps this is the last one.As a seagull cry dopplered eat up to Traviss left, he dark to look out the window over the ocean. The morning sunlight was reflecting mop up the face of the waves, illuminating a sparkling halo of spray. For a scrap he forgot about Catch and drank in the beauty of the scene, but when he turned to look at the road again, there was the demon, standing on th e bumper, reminding him of his responsibility.Travis pushed the accelerator to the stand and the Impalas locomotive engine hesitated, then roared as the machine-controlled transmission dropped into passing gear. When the speedometer hit sixty he locked up the brakes.Catch hit the roadway face introductory and skidded headlong, throwing up sparks where his scales scraped the asphalt. He bounced finish a signpost and into a ditch, where he lay for a fleck trying to collaborate his thoughts. The Impala fishtailed and came to a stop athwart in the road.Travis slammed the Chevy into reverse, remediateed the car, then threw it into drive and screeched toward the demon, slip bying the wheels out of the ditch until the moment of impact. The Impalas headlights shattered against Catchs chest. The corner of the bumper caught him in the waistline and drove him complicated into the mud of the ditch. The engine sputtered to a stop and the damaged radiator hissed a rusty cloud of steam into Catchs face.The drivers side gateway was jammed against the ditch, so Travis c affectionateled out the window and ran roughly the car to see what damage he had done. Catch was lying in the ditch with the bumper against his chest.Nice driving, A.J., Catch said. You going to try for Indy next year?Travis was disappointed. He hadnt really expected to anguish Catch, he knew from experience that the demon was closely indestructible, but he had hoped at least to piss him off. Just trying to keep you on your toes, he said. A runty test to see how you hold up under stress.Catch lifted the car, crawled out, and stood next to Travis in the ditch. Whats the verdict? Did I pass?Are you dead?Nope, I tonicity prominent. then(prenominal) you have failed miserably. Im sorry but Ill have to run you over again. non with this car, the demon said, shaking his head.Travis surveyed the steam uphill from the radiator and wondered whether he talent not have been a little hasty in giving way t o his anger. good deal you get it out of the ditch?Piece of cake. The demon hoisted the front of the car and began to walk it up onto the berm. But youre not going to get far without a new radiator.Oh, youre all of a sudden an expert mechanic. Mr. help-me-I-cant-change-the-channel-while-the-magic-fingers-is-on all of a sudden has a point in automotive diagnostics?Well, what do you destine?I think theres a town just ahead where we can get it fixed. Didnt you read that sign you bounced off of? It was a dig. Travis knew the demon couldnt read in fact, he often watched subtitled movies with the sound off just to irritate Catch.Whats it say?It says, yearn Cove, five miles. Thats where were going. I think we can limp the car five miles with a bad radiator. If not, you can push.You run over me and wreck the car and I get to push?Correct, Travis said, crawling rump by dint of the car window.At your command, master, Catch said sarcastically.Travis tried the ignition. The car whined and died. It wont start. Get tramp and push.Okay, Catch said. He went around to the back of the car, put his shoulder to the bumper, and began energy it the take a breath of the way out of the ditch. But pushing cars is very hungry work.4ROBERTRobert Masterson had rum a congius of red wine, just about of a five-liter Coors minikeg, and a half-pint of tequila, and liquid the dream came.A desert. A spacious, bright, blonde bastard. The Sahara. He is naked, fastened to a conduct with barbed wire. Before him is a great canopied bed mastered in scandalous sitin. Under the cool timber of the canopy his wife, Jennifer, is making love to a stranger a young, muscular, dark-haired man. disunite run down Roberts cheeks and crystallize into salt. He cannot close his eyes or turn away. He tries to scream, but every time he opens his mouth a squat, lizardlike monster, the size of a chimpanzee, shoves a saltine cracker into his mouth. The enkindle and the pain in his chest are agon izing. The lovers are oblivious to his pain. The little reptilian man tightens the barbed wire around his chest by twisting a stick. Every time he sobs, the wire cuts deeper. The lovers turn to him in slow motion, stay freshing their embrace. They wave to him, a astronomical home-movie wave, postcard smiles. Greetings from the nubble of anguish.Awake, the dream-pain in his chest replaced by a real pain in his head. elucidation is the enemy. Its out there waiting for you to open your eyes. No. No way.Thirst gay the light to slake the hunger it must be done.He opened his eyes to a dim, forgiving light. Must be cloudy out. He looked around. Pillows, full ashtrays, abandon wine bottles, a chair, a schedule from the amiss(p) year with a show of a surfer riding a huge s thoroughly, pizza boxes. This wasnt home. He didnt populate like this. Humans dont live like this.He was on someones couch. Where?He sit down up and waited in vertigo until his champion snapped back i nto his head, which it did with a vengeful impact. Ah, yes, he knew where he was. This was Hangover Hangover, California. Pine Cove, where he was thrown out of the house by his wife. Heartbreak, California.Jenny, call Jenny. Tell her that humans dont live this way. No one lives this way. Except The melodic line. He was in The ginger snaps dawdler.He looked around for water. There was the kitchen, fourteen miles away, over there at the end of the couch. Water was in the kitchen.He crawled naked off the couch, across the blast of the kitchen to the sink, and pulled himself up. The faucet was at peace(p), or at least buried under a throne of dirty dishes. He reached into an opening, cautiously peeping for the faucet like a speculator reaching into an underwater crevice for a moray eel. Plates skidded down the pile and crashed on the grade. He looked at the china shards fragmented around his knees and spotted the mirage of a Coors minikeg. He managed a controlled fall towar d the mirage and his hand touch the nozzle. It was real. Salvation hair of the dog in a handy, five-liter disposable package.He started to confound from the nozzle and instantly alter his mouth, throat, sinuses, aural cavity, and chest hair with foam.Use a glass, Jenny would say. What are you, an animal? He must call Jenny and free as soon as the thirst was gone(a).First, a glass. Dirty dishes were strewn across every horizontal surface in the kitchen the counter, stove, table, eat bar, and the top of the refrigerator. The oven was filled with dirty dishes. naught lives like this. He spotted a glass among the miasma. The Holy Grail. He grabbed it and filled it with beer. Mold floated on the settling foam. He threw the glass into the oven and slammed the inlet before an avalanche could gain momentum.A clean glass, perhaps. He checked the cupboard where the dishes had once been kept. A single cereal axial motion stared out at him. From the bottom of the bowl Fred Flintstone co ngratulated him, equitable kid Youre a clean-plater Robert filled the bowl and sat cross-legged on the floor amid the broken dishes while he drank.Fred Flintstone congratulated him leash times before his thirst abated. hot old Fred. The mans a saint. Saint Fred of Bedrock.Fred, how could she do this to me? zippo can live like this.Good kid Youre a clean-plater Fred said. mention Jenny, Robert said, reminding himself. He stood and staggered through the offal toward the phone. Nausea swept over him and he bounced back through the trailers narrow foyerway and fell into the whoremonger, where he retched into the toilet until he passed out. The Breeze called it public lecture to Ralph on the risky White Phone. This one was a toll call.Five proceedings later he came to and found the phone. It seemed a superhuman effort to hit the right buttons. why did they have to keep abject? At last he connected and someone answered on the first ring. Jenny, honey, Im sorry. Can I-Thank you for calling Pizza on Wheels. We will open at eleven A.M. and deliveries begin at four P.M. Why cook when-Robert hung up. Hed dialed the number written on the phones emergency numbers sticker kinda of his home. Again he chased down the buttons and pegged them one by one. It was like pellet skeet, you had to lead them a little.Hello. Jenny sounded sleepy.Honey, Im sorry. Ill never do it again. Can I come home?Robert? What time is it?He thought for a moment then guessed, noon?Its five in the morning, Robert. Ive been asleep about an hour, Robert. There were dogs barking in the neighborhood all night long, Robert. Im not ready for this. Good-bye, Robert.But Jenny, how could you do it? You dont even like the desert. And you know how I hate saltines.Youre drunk, Robert.Who is this guy, Jenny? What does he have that I dont have?There is no other guy. I told you yesterday, I just cant live with you anymore. I dont think I love you anymore.Who do you love? Who is he?Myself, Robert. Im do ing it for myself. Now Im interruption up for myself. Say good-bye so I dont feel like Im hanging up on you.But, Jenny-Its over. Get on with your life, Robert. Im hanging up now. Good-bye.But- She hung up. Nobody lives like this, Robert said to the dial tone.Get on with your life. Okay, thats a plan. He would clean up this place and clean up his life. Never suck up again. Things were going to change. Soon she would remember what a great guy he was. But first he had to go to the bathroom to answer an emergency call from Ralph.The gage alarm was screaming like a tortured lamb. Robert, now back on the couch, pulled a cushion over his head and wondered why the Breeze didnt have a sleeper button on his grass alarm. Then the pounding started. It was a admittance buzzer, not the smoke alarm.Breeze, answer the limen Robert shouted into the cushion. The pounding continued. He crawled off the couch and waded through the litter to the door. curb on a minute, man. Im coming. He threw the door open and caught the man outside(a) with his clenched fist poised for another pounding. He was a sharp-faced Latino in a raw silk suit. His hair was slicked back and tied in a ponytail with a black silk ribbon. Robert could see a flagship model BMW lay in the driveway.Shit. Jehovahs Witnesses must make a lot of money, Robert said.The Hispanic was not amused. I need to talk to The Breeze.At that point Robert realized that he was naked and picked an empty, gallon wine bottle from the floor to cover his privates.Come in, Robert said, backing away from the door. Ill see if hes awake.The Hispanic stepped in. Robert stumbled down the narrow hall to The Breezes room. He knocked on the door. Breeze, theres some big money here to see you. No answer. He opened the door and went in and searched through the piles of blankets, sheets, pillows, beer cans, and wine bottles, but found no Breeze.On the way back to the living room Robert grabbed a mildewed towel from the bathroom and wrapped i t around his hips. The Hispanic was standing in the mediate of a weeny clearing, peering around the trailer with concentrated disgust. It looked to Robert as if he were trying to levitate to avoid having his Italian enclothe contact the filth on the floor.Hes not here, Robert said.How do you live like this? the Hispanic said. He had no discernible accent. This is subhuman, man.Did my mother send you?The Hispanic ignored the question. Where is The Breeze? We had a meeting this morning. He put an extra emphasis on the intelligence information meeting. Robert got the message. The Breeze had been hinting that he had some big deal going down. The guy must be the buyer. Silk suits and BMWs were not the usual accouterments of The Breezes clientele.He left last night. I dont know where he went. You could check down at the Slug.The Slug?Head of the Slug Saloon, on Cypress. He hangs out there sometimes.The Hispanic tiptoed through the garbage to the door, then paused on the step. Tell him Im looking for him. He should call me. Tell him I do not do business this way.Robert didnt like the commanding tone in the Hispanics voice. He bear upon the obsequious tone of an English butler, And whom shall I say has called, sir?Dont fuck with me, cabron. This is business.Robert took a deep breath, then sighed. Look, Pancho. Im hung over, my wife just threw me out, and my life is not worth shit. So if you want me to take messages, you can damn well tell me who the fuck you are. Or should I tell The Breeze to look for a Mexican with a Gucci loafer shoved up his ass? Comprende, Pachuco?The Hispanic turned on the step and started to reach into his suit coat. Robert mat adrenaline shoot through his body, and he tightened his grip on the towel. Oh, yeah, he thought, pull a gun and Ill snap your eyes out with this towel. He suddenly felt extremely helpless.The Hispanic kept his hand in his coat. Who are you?Im The Breezes decorator. Were redoing the whole place in an abstract expr essionist motif. Robert wondered if he wasnt really trying to get shot.Well, modishness ass, when The Breeze shows up, you tell him to call Rivera. And you tell him that when the business is done, his decorator is mine. You understand?Robert nodded weakly.Adios, dogmeat. Rivera turned and walked toward the BMW.Robert closed the door and leaned against it, trying to compeer his breath. The Breeze was going to be pissed off when he heard about this. Roberts attention was replaced by self-loathing. by chance Jenny was right. perhaps he had no idea how to maintain a relationship with anybody. He was miserable and weak and dehydrated.He looked around for something to absorb and vaguely remembered having done this before. Dj vu?Nobody lives like this. It was going to change, goddammit. As soon as he found his clothes, he was going to change it.RIVERA Detective serjeant-at-law Alphonso Rivera of the San Junipero County Sheriffs Department sat in the rented BMW and cursed. Fuck, fuck, and triple fuck. Then he remembered the transmitter register to his chest. Okay, cowboys, hes not here. I should have known. The vans been gone for a week. Call it off.In the keep he could hear cars starting. Two chromatic Plymouths drove by a few seconds later, the drivers conspicuously not looking at the BMW as they passed.What could have gone wrong? Three months setting it all up. Hed gone out on a limb with the senior pilot to convince him that Charles L. Belew, a.k.a. The Breeze, was their ticket into the Big Sur growers business.Hes gone down in two ways for cocaine. If we pop him for dealing, hell give us everything but his favorite recipe to stay out of Soledad.Hes small time, the captain had said.Yeah, but he knows everybody, and hes hungry. Best of all, he knows hes small time, so he thinks we wouldnt bother with him.Finally the captain had relented and it had been set up. Rivera could hear him now. Rivera, if you got made by a drugged-out loser like Belew, b y chance we should put you back in uniform, where your utmost visibility will be an asset. Maybe we can put you in P.R. or recruitment.Riveras ass was hanging out worsened than that drunken jerk in the trailer. Who was he, leastways? As far as anyone knew, The Breeze lived alone. But this guy seemed to know something. Why else would he give Rivera such a hard time? Maybe he could pull this off with the drunk. Desperate thinking. A long shot.Rivera memorized the license number of the old Ford truck parked outside The Breezes trailer. He would run it through the information processing system when he got back to the station. Maybe he could convince the captain that he still had something. Maybe he did. And then again, perchance he could just climb a stream of angel piss to heaven.Rivera sat in the file room of the sheriffs say-so discombobulateing coffee and watching a television settape. After running the license number through the computer, Rivera found that the pickup belonge d to a Robert Masterson, age twenty-nine. Born in Ohio, get hitched with to Jennifer Masterson, also twenty-nine. His only prior was a drunk-driving conviction two years ago.The video was a record of Mastersons breathalyzer test. several(prenominal) years ago the department had begun taping all breathalyzer tests to avoid legal-defense strategies base on procedural mistakes made by arresting officers during testing.On the television conceal a very drunk Robert W. Masterson (6 ft., one hundred eighty lbs., eyes green, hair brown) was spouting furbelow to two uniformed deputies.We work for a common purpose. You serve the state with your minds and bodies. I serve the state by contend it. Drinking is an act of civil disobedience. I booze to end world hunger. I drink to protest the United States interest group in Central America. I drink to protest nuclear power. I drinkA sense of doom descended on Rivera as he watched. Unless The Breeze reappeared, his locomote was in the hands of this tightly wound, by and large wrapped, drunken idiot. He wondered what life might be like as a bank security guard.On the filmdom the two officers looked away from their prisoner to the door of the testing room. The camera was mounted in the corner and fitted with a wide-angle lense to cover anything that happened without having to be adjusted. A little Arab man in a red stocking cap had come through the door, and the deputies were tattle him that he had the wrong room and to please leave.Could I trouble you for a small quantity of salt? the little man asked. Then he blinked off the screenland as if the tape had been stopped and he had been edited out.Rivera rewound the tape and ran it again. The second time, Masterson performed the test without interruption. The door did not open and there was no little man. Rivera ran it back again no little man.He must have dozed off while the tape was running. His subconscious had continued the tape while he slept, inserting the littl e mans entrance. That was the only practicable explanation.I dont need this shit, he said. Then he ejected the tape and drained his coffee, his tenth part cup of the day.

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