The Demon of Montreal Read online

  The Demon of Montreal

  By

  A. Michael Schwarz

  Credits Page

  Damnation Books, LLC.

  P.O. Box 3931

  Santa Rosa, CA 95402-9998

  www.damnationbooks.com

  The Demon of Montreal

  by A. Michael Schwarz

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-61572-965-4

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61572-966-1

  Cover art by: Cinsearae Santiago

  Edited by: Juanita Kees

  Copyright 2013 A. Michael Schwarz

  Printed in the United States of America

  Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights

  Worldwide English Language Print Rights

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication page

  I would like to dedicate the Demon of Montreal to Mister Boffo.

  I would like to acknowledge Alex Donovan who originally brought the delightfully dark image of the demon of Montreal to mind with the utterance of the elusive character named in my dedication. Something slinked in the dark when Alex invoked the name and then congealed the following days at World Con in Montreal until I was shouting deliriously at Alex describing the demon of Montreal’s character. Had he not spoken the name, I doubt very much that my dark Loa would have ever come into being.

  Part One

  The Coming of the End

  Chapter One

  Montreal slept on the eve of its destruction. Rue Sainte-Catherine was a barren womb. Lovers lay tucked away in warm beds, asleep. Drunkards belched obscene diatribes and clownish laughter, while the sober snoozed stupidly in front of flashing televisions. Whores and the lust-crazed entertained themselves with pornography or self-loathing. All city thoroughfares decayed into withered arteries catering only to the few who lingered.

  Wind blew frosty for late September and with a wintry finger, pushed forward an unclassifiable scent. Not quite putrid, not quite rotten, not quite organic.

  His darkness swelled, an ink blot in water, sucking in light like some unquenchable sponge while foot falls echoed in a stride that did not pause.

  He inhaled the night, tasted the scent.

  The End comes.

  He entered the neighborhood of Saint-Michel near Rue Jean-Talon and Eighth Avenue, and scanned for the one who beckoned him. A pair of cat eyes glowed in the flickering streetlamps. Flickering because he stepped beneath them. Trash covers clanged against the tarmac as the feline skittered into the alley, away from the cold—from he who brought a different kind of chill.

  The Summoner sat on the curb a few meters from him. A street lamp buzzed and dimmed, then popped to darkness. He’d sucked in its energy, exhausted the electric filaments. Now he could see as a man sees at noon.

  The Summoner curled knees to chest and rocked to and fro. He stepped closer, close enough to determine the sex of the caller, a Haitian woman, old and brittle-boned. She sat, ready and waiting.

  Closer. She knew he was there, because they always knew. He could smell the musk in her clothes and her skin, and the perfume she’d used to cover it up.

  “I see you,” she whispered.

  He kneeled to her, a silhouette in the shadows, and opened his palm. When she accepted, he brought her to wobbling knees and stared into her eyes. Those eyes. They spoke to him as words never could. Gleaming jewels perfect for the cause.

  Her clothes hung on her as if she were a scarecrow. Her back curled like a twig in the fire. Her sagging breasts hung flat beneath her blouse.

  He opened his arms completing the final invitation.

  She hesitated. He could feel her doubt, her sudden realization: yes, this is happening right now. Tears soaked the papery skin of her black face and reflected the moonlight, illuminating pieces of her soul. Her doubt turned to decision.

  “You take me now.” The quiet resignation of deletion.

  He need only wait.

  She gave into him. The heat of her body burned against his. She shook for a moment and no more as he crushed her. She did not cry or plead or protest as he squeezed the life from her, molding her crooked body to the contours of his, snapping her neck and vertebrae like dusty twigs, throttling that halting heart.

  She did not weep, but he did.

  He lifted her, one arm under her bent knees, the other under her lolling neck and walked with the same unfaltering footsteps out of Saint-Michel.

  No one saw him. No one could have. Not because he absorbed any trace of light, but because any would-be-ogler had long since slipped under warm quilts and drifted into dreams. Any midnight watcher had replaced spectacles for a nightcap, and coffee for chamomile. And so he walked carrying this one for the Thing and the ultimate service to everything.

  Chapter Two

  Abby poked her fork into her Kung Pao Chicken. Tonight she’d managed to eat two bites. Two bites too many, she thought.

  The din of the crowd, the clanking of dishes, the clamor of conversation—all served as insulation from the Eaters at the table. Yes, that’s what they were: Eaters. Not family, not friends, not really even people. Just Eaters. They ate and when finished, prattled amongst themselves without regard for Abigail Winston.

  No matter. Regard had been dropped for Abby in most places, almost as if she were fading from the world, one microscopic bit by bit. She peered out from under her downcast brow at the Eaters.

  To Abby’s right perched her sister, Trisha. Everybody’s favorite. Loud, happy, pretty—everything Abby wasn’t. Midnight dark hair fell about Trisha’s shoulders like crushed velour, iridescent in the lamp light, caressing the tops of her swelling, white breasts. Unlike Abby’s drab, split ends that hid her gaunt face and accentuated nothing, let alone breasts that did not swell, but rather drooped.

  Going clockwise met her father, a kind man, who never failed to find the good in things. Here was a man who was deeply loved and respected by everyone who knew him. Certainly, the cast mold for Trisha—the two were perfect together. Daddy’s little over-achiever, Trisha had always been Daddy’s perfect baby.

  Then came Abby’s mother. A hopeless victim who’d failed in life before she’d started. If not for Abby’s father, her mother would have long since eroded to sand six feet under, but the man breathed life into her. Abby’s father had kept her afloat on the sea of humanity. Her mother had no idea, never appreciating her husband for the savior that he was.

  Abby took after her mother and hated herself for it. Unlike her mother, however, she did not have a strong redeemer to salvage her from the human wreckage pile…anymore.

  The rest of the table was a sprinkling of a few ‘friends of the family’, one uncle and one cousin. People Abby rarely spoke to, if ever.

  She sank back in her seat letting the tag of her blouse dig into her skin—a reminder that she was, in some way, still here. She smiled a wry smile that had no mirth, but would pass her off as normal, for a little while anyway.

  She twirled her fork in the greasy sauce of her entrée. What if she spilled the contents of her plate atop her head? Probably no one would even notice. She smirked
. A silver knife glistened to the right of her plate. She wondered if these Eaters would even notice if she held it to her wrist. What if she grated it across her delicate skin and spilled a gravy-boat-load of blood into her Kung Pao Chicken? Would they notice then?

  “Are you finished, ma’am?” The waiter had his hand on her plate of uneaten food.

  She snapped out of her day dream. “Sorry. Yeah. Done.”

  “Would you like a box for it?”

  She swallowed and repressed a gag. “No. No, please.” God, she thought, when did I get like this?

  The answer was too ready in her mind, a fresh cut that still leaked blood. A sore called Steven. No, couldn’t have been Steven. She’d been living on the verge long before he came along. Yes, but Steven had been the Final Event.

  The waiter returned with a round of fortune cookies. Abby’s stomach growled for the first time in days. Actually felt hunger. A cookie she could handle. Small, sweet, easy to swallow. She grabbed first. No one saw. Her sister was telling the story of her oversized engagement ring.

  Abby snapped the cookie in two and shoved the smaller half into her mouth, crunching it until it mingled with her saliva, and melted. Since when did fortune cookies taste so good? God, it had been a while since she’d eaten. The back of her hand suddenly seemed surprisingly thin, wasted even. She pulled her hand to her lap in some pretense of genteel etiquette. Then broke off little bits of the cookie and finished it.

  The crumbs stared back at her on the plate and the fortune lay twisted among them. She began nibbling on the crumbs. She had no interest in fortunes. They meant nothing to her, like so much in her life, just one long parade of generic sequences.

  Except Steven.

  She’d told him at the outset of her problem. The depression that grabbed hold of her soul and wouldn’t let go. The fits of melancholy that dragged her down into her own version of Hell. She’d told him right from the beginning, on their first date. She’d told him because she told everyone, and she’d wanted to give him fair warning so he could make an ‘informed decision’.

  He said he didn’t care. He said he could handle anything for her. He’d had his eye on her for a while, watching her from a distance, waiting for her to come in every morning and feeling disappointed on her days off. She had, he’d said, something that other girls didn’t.

  It was true. She had a festering neurosis beneath her casual manner. A frantic world of panic behind cold eyes where she wondered when the next bout of darkness would strike, how long it would last, how deep it would go.

  She’d wanted to cry when he’d said it. She’d wanted to scream at him and tell him he was a fool, an idealistic and self-indulgent fool. She hadn’t because, for the first time in her life, someone made her feel less alone.

  Days, then months, passed. She and Steven had moved in together, sharing their lives in intertwined tangles. Sex had been restless at first, hectic, but before long she’d gotten into the groove and learned how to make him happy and herself too.

  She wasn’t a virgin, but sex had always been something she hadn’t quite understood. Her first times had been little more than giving legal consent to performing the act. Instead of erotic pleasure, her view of the subject had been almost medical. Now, she’d found great pleasure in having a paramour who’d wanted her in every way to overshadow the degradation she felt in the act itself. Steven had nursed her along, shown her a few tricks to ply together in their bedtime trade.

  It had been good, for a time, but no matter all the love he gave her, all the passion he bestowed, he could not fight the demons that plagued her. Both had hoped he could and, in the beginning, it had seemed his mere presence was a panacea, a cure-all for her darkness.

  Bit by bit, the madness crept back in, the heavy veil of pain and dread…and little by little Steven pulled away from her.

  “I just don’t get it,” he’d once said. “I give you everything I have and still…still you’re not happy.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s not that, it’s just…I don’t know.”

  He’d been right, but not for the reasons he pushed on himself. Not because he was somehow inadequate or because Abby didn’t love him. Indeed, she loved him more than any person or object created by God, but her demons didn’t care a rip about that. Her demons wanted only one thing. They wanted her soul.

  Fits of deep despair had made her unable to reach for him, to show her love, or care—she couldn’t even care for herself.

  She would sleep twelve, sometimes fourteen hours a day when the darkness came. Weeks would go by and the spell would lift and Steven, emotionally bruised but unbroken, would come unbidden to her, crawl between her legs and give her some of that bottled-up passion.

  Things would be good again, for a while. Then the next attack unfurled to bring her down all over again. Each time Steven went down with her, the toll became much harder to pay. The gulf between them widened. Until at last, he couldn’t—wouldn’t—do it anymore.

  “I love you so much,” he’d said, “but God, I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t.”

  Abby hadn’t tried to stop him. She’d just listened as he’d walked out, carrying the last of his things, and closed the door behind him. Tears had come at first, then just a dull ache as she wondered how she would manage on her own again. Not just the rent and the bills, but the blackness inside that would surely eat her alive.

  She crunched on a fortune cookie crumb. The memories faded and the Chinese Restaurant returned. Maybe that’s why she’d lost her appetite. She’d been feeding on her soul for the last three weeks since Steven had walked out on her.

  Trisha had insisted that she come along tonight, to get her out of the house perhaps, to get her around people again. This seemed like an empty gesture as she sat at the table staring at the crumbs on her plate.

  She picked up the twisted paper amidst the cookie crumbs and flipped it over in her hand. A laugh was all that escaped her lips. No…a whimper. The Goddamned thing was blank.

  The sting of unfair reality stabbed at her heart, nearly struck her physically. Even of this, she could be cheated. Even in a thing as sophomoric as a fortune cookie, she could be ignored…erased. Herein lay proof. The universe did not recognize her anymore.

  Chapter Three

  On her bed, lay four objects: a razor, a bottle of aspirin, a coil of clothesline and a blank fortune.

  Abby lit another cigarette and squashed out the one that had burnt back to the filter. Her ashtray overflowed…stank. She sat in her studio apartment— little more than four walls and a toilet—in her underwear with oblong holes where the fabric no longer met the elastic. A prison, she thought.

  She hadn’t showered in days. Her body smelled ripe, the result of overworked sweat glands fed a steady diet of cigarettes and coffee. Her hair was a confused wreath of snarls and the circles under her eyes were dark, ugly bruises. She didn’t sleep, didn’t want to. Not without Steven around when she woke up.

  This one—this time—she’d had an episode she just couldn’t shake. The television blared incessant nonsense but she left it on because it was better than silence. She picked up the razor and held the kill-end to her wrist. She felt a tingle. The idea of that much blood though…she set the razor down.

  The aspirin bottle seemed so full. Gobble all those in one go? She’d likely puke before they killed her.

  Ah, the clothesline, tie it to the ceiling fan and—she shook her head.

  She eyed the fortune and this time did laugh. Yes, that’s the way! Death by fortune. Isn’t that what a blank one meant?

  Of course, if she were too chicken-shit for any of it, she could just jump off the Champlain Bridge.

  Funny, since she’d decided on suicide, that moon crater of despair she’d slid into, had abated a bit, the bottom of her depression now a somewhat higher mental plain to rest on and contemplate
her own destruction felicitously.

  The darkness still lingered somewhere in the periphery, but the edge had been taken off. Perhaps the mind, stimulated with a new problem to solve, unstuck itself from the old.

  Her nicotine stained fingers tapped the aspirin bottle. Of all three, this seemed the most humane and easiest. Just fall asleep. Yeah, but it ain’t fool proof. She’d heard of people waking up afterwards, numb and sick or calling 911 at the last minute to get a stomach pump. Besides, that might put her in front of a shrink, and she hated shrinks.

  Better think this over again.

  Hanging was out…she’d heard bloodletting was calming…

  She leaned back and lit a smoke. It tasted like shit.

  Maybe she ought to call someone, but whom? Certainly she wasn’t about to call her family—no, not Trisha or Dad and God no, not Mom.

  Perhaps…Steven then? She felt sick to the pit of her stomach. Hi Steven, since you dumped me for being depressed, I’ve decided to kill myself.

  “Fuck it.” She got up, stripped off her underwear and ran the shower. Not now. Later. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, but not now. She checked out her butt in the mirror and decided it was too skinny.

  The shower felt good on her skin, the soap perfume mingled with the steam. It was almost too good. She didn’t want to leave it, but she needed to get out of her stinking, smoke-filled apartment and walk. Yes, she needed to walk.

  She pulled on a pair of tight-fitting jeans and a black hoodie. Those jeans make your ass look good. She heard Steven’s oft repeated compliment in her head. He loved her ass.

  She dried her hair and pulled it back to a slick ponytail. For some reason she scooped up the fortune. It seemed a novelty, a sort of totem that defined her life. She stepped out into the night. Clean, cool air soothed her freshly washed skin.