After several minutes of staring at the grisly, detailed illustrations, I lingered long enough to read bits of the text. It wasn’t pretty. For centuries, humans have blamed their vices on the temptation of Satan and his army of demons, but very few of those claims are actually true, based on what I’ve heard. There just aren’t enough demons to go around. Nonetheless, several hundred of those claims were documented inDemons Throughout History, in fantastically grotesque detail. I couldn’t help wondering how accurate the images and stories were. Not that I was in any hurry to find out for myself.
About halfway through the book, I found a white strip of paper pressed between two of the pages like a bookmark. It was a receipt from a Walmart in Cutler, Maine, detailing the purchase of a bottle of root beer, an atlas, a pair of sneakers, a pre-paid cell phone, and a spiral-bound notebook—probably the one I’d just pulled from his backpack.
The date on the receipt was the very day Devich’s plane went down. Which was two and a half days ago.
I stuck the receipt back between the pages—upside down and backward, just like I’d found it—and was about to close the book when an illustration on the right-hand page drew my eye. According to the caption, it was a woodcut done in the late fifteenth century by a man named Albrecht Dürer. I’d never heard of the artist, but the image itself was truly frightening and amazingly detailed. It showed four men on horses trampling several broken and dying people beneath their hooves. A winged angel flew overhead, and in one corner, the mouth of some huge beast stretched open, ready to chomp down on the man unfortunate enough to find himself between the creature’s long, sharp teeth.
Why did people insist on scaring themselves with imaginary monsters, when there were so manyrealones out there perfectly willing to do the work for free?
In the caption below the image, the name of the woodcut had been highlighted in lit-class yellow.Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Huh. Wonder what that has to do with the scary fire djinn hell-bent on Earth’s destruction…
A quick scan of the opposite page gave me no clue, despite the single line highlighted halfway down, which read, “The fourth horse is generally considered to represent pestilence and to be ridden by Death.” Interesting stuff—creepy, but fascinating.
I was staring at a full-page black-and-white illustration of Signorelli’sThe Reception of the Damned into Hellwhen my cell phone rang. Dropping the book on the comforter, I snatched my phone from the bedside table. The name on the screen put an instant frown on my face, but I answered anyway. “Hi, Evan.”
“Since when can you see wraiths?”
“Nice to talk to you too.”
“Cut the crap, Lex. I delivered your ghost, and you owe me an answer. When did you start seeing wraiths?”
“I don’t know.” Sighing, I plopped down on the bed and pulledDemons Throughout Historyback onto my lap, noting with relief that holding the phone at my ear barely bothered my bad arm. I was healing even faster than expected. “Since yesterday, I guess. Or maybe I’ve been seeing them all along and just didn’t realize it. The dead don’t look any different from the living, right?”
“Right. Except that they’re freakin’transparent.” His sarcasm was sharp enough to etch glass.
“Either cuss, or don’t cuss, Evan.” I flipped another page in the book. “That half-ass shit just sounds stupid. And James Allen wasnottransparent. He was solid enough to stop a fucking train.” Stuck between the next two pages was a stapled packet of paper, folded in half, then stuck in the spine of the book.
“What the hell are you talking about? He was so old I could barely see him. I might not have even known he was there if you hadn’t told me where to look.”
“Sounds to me like you’re slipping.” I smiled at the angry sound he made in the back of his throat, while I pulled the folded papers from the book and opened them. It was a report or research document of some sort. At a glance, it looked about as interesting as watching Orthus lick himself. “Look, I told you what I saw—believe whatever you want.” I dropped the pages on top of the green notebook, my respect for Cale’s taste in entertainment dwindling by the second.
“That’s it? No explanation? No thank-you? No ‘how ya been, Evan?’ I drag my butt all the way to Nova Scotia in the middle of the night to do you a favor, and you won’t even tell me what’s going on?”
Okay, he wasn’t exactly out of line on that one. And I still hadn’t told him that my client was no longer picking up the bill for his flight… “You’re right. I’m sorry. Thank you. And how ya been?”
“Very funny.” Yet he sounded thoroughly un-amused. “One of these days I’m going to call in all the favors you owe me, and I’m only going to tell you half of what you need to know to get the job done.”
I was no longer listening. Several patches of yellow on the creased report had snared my attention. Cale—or someone—had highlighted two words on the first page. “Erra” and “Jarri.” Sounded like nonsense to me, but then so did pig Latin, so I was hardly qualified to judge.
Curious now, I flipped the first sheet over to find “Resheph” highlighted on the second page. And “Merihim” and “Pazuzu” on the third. In context, they read like names. And at the bottom of the third and last page, Cale had written the word “Dever” in that unmistakable square print. Unfortunately, there was no context to help clarify that one.
“Lex? I know you’re still there. I can hear you breathing.”
What?“Sorry. I’m— Hey Evan, have you ever heard the word ‘Merihim’?”
“Not that I remember. Why?”
“What about Pazuzu, or…” I flipped back to the second page. “…Resheph?”
“Yes!” His pitch rose in recognition. “Resheph was the Phoenician god of the underworld. Or maybe it was Egyptian. It’s been a while since my college mythology class. And Pazuzu?”
“Yeah.” I scanned the report as I listened.
“You should know that one. It’s the name of the demon that possessed that little girl in The Exorcist.”
“What?” That caught my attention, and a subconscious connection pounded on the surface of my conscious mind, trying to break through. “Pazuzu’s a demon?”
