The Demon Signet Read online

  Ian turned the radio off.

  “What the hell was that?” Ashley whispered.

  No one said anything for a while, and then Ian started to laugh. Soon they were all laughing. It seemed all they could do to keep themselves distracted from the terror that was there knocking on their skulls.

  YOU ARE GOING TO DIE OUT HERE…

  “That was like something from the X-Files,” Heather commented, beginning to settle down. “We should check and see if we lost any time.”

  Marcus nodded. “I was thinking of Close Encounters, myself.”

  Ian looked cautiously into the mirrors. “Neither one a detour I’d prefer.”

  They retreated into silent consideration, wondering where to file such an experience in their brains, how to compartmentalize it as sensible. Marcus and Ian had a bit more going through their minds, but that would soon change.

  Snowflakes began fluttering out of the sky as clouds rapidly moved to block the sinking sun from view, its climactic exit shielded from viewing eyes.

  Six

  Forty minutes later—after having passed through Lower Oswegatchie and the towns of Pitcairn and Harrisville—they were rolling through North Croghan, and Heather was fidgeting in her seat. That all-too familiar feeling was beginning to snake its way through her limbs again, a subtle restlessness that usually signaled the beginning of an oncoming episode. She’d need to get out of the car soon, to breathe open air, but she was determined to endure the agony as long as possible before making Ian pull over. She didn’t like the idea of standing on the side of the road out here, not since the beauty of their surroundings had been banished into an evil portal back at Star Lake. The snow that was falling harder and harder with every new shade of twilight wasn’t helping soothe the ominous feelings either. She tried to associate whatever ghosts and goblins were behind the odd phenomena not with the occupants of the Taurus nor the Adirondack mountains as a whole, but rather that single town of Star Lake, a town behind them and no longer any of their concern. There were “real” problems they were facing now, and possessed mailboxes would have to wait for the ghost stories around the fire—a holiday tradition the coming storm was going to try keeping them from.

  She saw a graveyard coming up and nudged her sister. “Hey, remember the game Grandmom used to play with us?”

  Ashley followed Heather’s gaze to the scattered tombstones. “The cow game?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cow game?” Marcus inquired.

  Ashley explained, “On long drives, we would play this game…”

  “The cow game?”

  “The cow game.”

  Ian chimed in. “How does one play this ‘cow game’?”

  A flood of memories reached the shores of Heather’s mind. “If you’re sitting on the right side of the car, the right side of the road is your playing field. If you’re on the left, then you have the left side. Whenever you pass a farm, you have until the farm fades from view to count as many cows as you can. That’s your score, the number of cows you can count on your side of the road along the way.”

  “Left cows versus right cows?” Marcus was grinning.

  “Yup. You keep a tallying score and whoever has the most cows at the end of the trip wins.”

  “But,” Ashley interjected, “there’s a catch.”

  Ian raised his eyebrows. “Ooh.”

  “Whenever you pass a cemetery on your side of the road, all your cows die and you have to start over at zero.”

  Both men laughed in the front seats.

  “Not sure we’ll be seeing too many cows out here,” Ian remarked. And then he frowned. “I did surgery on a cow once.”

  “Really?” Heather grimaced. That was something, standing at the podium after being crowned Prom Queen, she’d never dreamed would come from her future husband’s mouth. An apolitical farm boy with his own veterinarian practice? Really? It was an affront to all her old Sex in the City aspirations, a step in the opposite direction from all the athletes, doctors, and lawyers she was used to being with, but after only her first date with Ian, she felt the need to be on the glamour scale of meaninglessness slip away from her, no longer compelled to be the superstar model-actress that everyone had always encouraged her to be. Ian made her feel like herself—a person who had become a stranger, even to her. He’d freed her, liberated her. Loved her for more than her body, for more than what she could do for his reputation. She wasn’t an accessory to him. And from that first night together, she knew that she would never let him go. Even if he did prefer cows to people.

  “Heath, can you see how far we are from the nearest city?” Ian was looking more concerned with every layer of darkness unfolding across the sky.

  “You thinking of stopping?” Marcus asked.

  “Depends how bad this gets. We can’t navigate these roads in a whiteout. We’ll end up in a lake.”

  Heather and Ashley both sighed, knowing how disappointed their parents—their parents!

  “Crap!” Heather glanced at the time displayed on the dashboard. “Forgot to call Mom and Dad again.”

  Ashley turned her phone on. “I’ll do it.”

  When Heather brought her own screen to life, she tried accessing their progress on the map application she’d been using, but the app wouldn’t open for her. Instead, and even though the search bar was empty, Google Images opened to thumbnail images of—

  She gasped, and the hand that held the phone began to tremble, the car’s physiology shrinking.

  Dead cats.

  The images were all of dead cats.

  No. Not cats plural. Cat. They were all images of one cat. White, bigger than a Cocker Spaniel, green eyes, the point of its tail dipped in black ink…

  No way in hell, Heather thought, staring at the thumbnails. No way.

  But she knew. The primeval chalice, brimming with the metaphysical, had been sipped of and its contents had her drunk with fear.

  The cat. That cat. They were all pictures of that cat. But how? What—

  Mr. and Mrs. Jennings had lived next door when she was ten years old. They had a cat, Snowy, and they treated the thing like it was a child, their only child. But the big white cat never liked Heather, and Heather hadn’t cared much for it in return. It was always hissing at her, bearing its pointy teeth like some vampire cat wanting to feast on her neck and bathe in her blood. One day, on her way home from school, Heather ran into Snowy on the sidewalk. The cat had somehow gotten out of the house. It stood there, hissing, challenging her with those fangs. Heather hadn’t meant to kill it, just to send it a message. But the tip of her Converse sneaker snapped Snowy’s vertebrae, killing the cat instantly. After looking around and seeing no witnesses, Heather had tossed the dead cat into the street and then continued on her way. Later, she rode her bike past the scene of the crime and saw with satisfaction that Snowy’s white hair was barely noticeable beneath the crimson blanket that covered it. Its entrails had slithered out of its exploded stomach like alien parasites escaping its host. Mr. and Mrs. Jennings, to this day, believed that their cat had been hit by a car. And indeed it had been…

  But here was Snowy now, thumbnail after thumbnail, four rows of six and many more available to her if she would just scroll down. They were all different angles of the same scene, the scene she’d ridden her bicycle past after dinner more than eighteen years ago. But who had taken the pictures? And how was it possible that they just showed up without even—

  “No answer,” Ashley said, hanging up. Then she asked, “You okay?”

  Heather brought her eyes up from the phone and tried to swallow. “I’m gonna need some air…”

  Ian looked back. “Did you find the nearest city?”

  But Heather couldn’t look down at her phone again, at the dead cat. She began shaking.

  “I’ll look it up,” Ashley offered, and two minutes later she was announcing her findings while resting a hand on Heather’s knee. “Watertown. It’s about half an hour away. Looks pretty big, lots
of traffic lights.”

  “Okay, half an hour.” Ian looked back to his fiancée. “Think you can make that, Heath?”

  She nodded. She didn’t think she could make five more minutes, but if half an hour meant warmth, food, and the company of other people in an open, civilized setting, then she would try her hardest to hang on for Watertown. She didn’t know why “civilization” should bring added comfort, as if the tremors shaking her grasp of the natural world would be warded off by internet cafés, traffic lights, and McDonalds. For some reason, though, she thought she would feel better in a modern, concrete city.

  “Earthquake.”

  “Huh?” Marcus turned toward Ashley while Ian tried finding her in the rearview.

  “That’s what it was,” Ashley said, shaking her head as if she was so stupid for not seeing it before.

  “What ‘what’ was?” Ian looked confused.

  “The mailboxes.”

  “You think that was an earthquake?”

  “What else?”

  As ludicrous as her theory was, no one had a different explanation.

  “Earthquake,” Ian repeated, nodding as if he could actually accept it.

  But Heather knew that earthquakes couldn’t drum up a person’s secret past through a Smartphone. She wrapped her arms around her chest and leaned forward, eyes still closed. Half an hour.

  Ian turned the radio up.

  “…The weather outside is frightful…”

  And indeed, as the remaining light of day melted into the earth, snow began falling faster and harder, as if encouraged by the lyrics ringing through the tiny speakers.

  “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…”

  Ian turned the windshield wipers on, and the fast swish-swoosh of rubber squeaking over glass seemed only to hasten the rate at which the space was closing on Heather’s vulnerable psyche.

  Half an hour…

  But Snowy was standing in her way, grinning at her.

  Seven

  He’s getting closer. He can hear it calling out to him through the lesser-known fabrics that make up this world’s constitution. He likens the effect to a book he read when he was a child, some ridiculous story about a hobbit. He knows where the author’s ideas came from, the truth that inspired the fiction. There are too many similarities shared for it not to be so.

  The thought of his childhood sends a shudder through his body, and he pushes the past from his mind.

  The road comes at him quickly, the snow that’s falling making it nearly invisible, but he doesn’t dare slow down. Not when he’s this close.

  He senses something up ahead, a presence nearing his path. He isn’t certain what it is, but he knows where it will be, and he turns the wheel, taking his dark chariot into the oncoming lane beside him. A moment later, in his periphery, he sees the shape of a leaping deer. It materializes out of the woods and lands a mere foot from his car. Had he not sensed its warmth, its life-force, ahead of time, his pursuit of the ring would have been severely hindered. He thanks his Company for the warning and swerves back into the eastbound lane. He adjusts his glasses with a gloved hand, pounding snow reflecting across their lenses.

  Behind him, the deer stands still on the invisible road and watches after the glowing taillights. Like glowing red eyes that close for sleep, they finally disappear into the fury of the storm. Above it, somewhere from within the white oblivion, crows begin to sing.

  The deer’s knees bend in a flash, and the animal is suddenly soaring away from the asphalt, disappearing into the safety of the forest.

  Eight

  By the time the red rental rolled into Watertown, the sun had disappeared from the sky and no cows had yet been seen. The snow was heavier, and the wind was hurling it horizontally across their path. The headlights’ twin beams poked through the frenzy while traffic lights flashed yellow from somewhere in the distance. Plows were already out, and their own yellow lights could be seen blinking beneath the moving shroud. A few people were running along the sidewalks with their heads down, fighting against the frigid air and blinding snow, trying to find their way indoors. The whole town would be shut down soon.

  “We should get off the roads now,” Heather said. There was no missing the dread in her voice, her fear of being trapped inside another car.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty hungry, myself,” Ian muttered. He was peering into the blur before them, squinting as if it might help.

  Ashley pointed to a line of lights standing off to the left. “I think that’s a shopping mall.”

  It was hard to tell what it was.

  Ian turned the wheel, but the Taurus slid straight into the intersection, the backend swinging counter-clockwise. Compensating by turning into the slide, Ian let the car slow on its own before trying to accelerate again. He navigated the rest of the turn into a powdered field he believed to be a parking lot.

  “This is crazy,” Marcus observed. “Can’t see a thing.”

  “Mom and Dad aren’t gonna be happy.” Ashley sighed, feeling the Christmas party gradually slip from reach.

  “They’ll be happy we’re still alive.” Heather was rocking back and forth in the seat.

  “You okay?” her sister asked.

  “I’ll be fine. Just gotta get out of this car.”

  Ian pulled up in front of the lighted windows.

  “Thank God,” Marcus whispered. The shining lights were not coming from a shopping mall, but a diner.

  Ian turned the car around and parked it in proximity to where he figured the first parking slot should be. “Looks like we’re the only ones here.”

  But two people, bundled in winter coats with their hoods up, just materialized in the glow shining forth through the diner’s front door. They eagerly entered the building and then had to fight the wind in order to pull the door closed behind them.

  “Looks like it’s open.” Marcus got out of the car.

  Ashley yelped when the air hit her through the open door. “It’s freezing!” She thrust her phone into her pocket and opened the door beside her.

  Ian took the key out of the ignition and looked back at Heather as Marcus and Ashley closed their doors simultaneously. “You okay?” he asked.

  She forced a smile. “You think they have tomato pie? I could really go for a tomato pie.”

  “Let’s go find out.”

  They stepped out into the freezing night and hurried after Marcus’ and Ashley’s footprints. They led to the diner’s door, which Ashley was holding open for them. They ran past her and into the warm embrace of the foyer.

  Following Heather into the restaurant, Ashley took Marcus’ hand as they all absorbed their new environment.

  Marcus turned toward her. “Your hand’s freezing.”

  “It’s cold outside.”

  A man with an apron tied around his waist appeared from behind the kitchen doors.

  “Hey, folks. Mighty nasty out there, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.” Marcus nodded.

  “You from around here?” Not waiting for an answer, he continued, “It’s just that most of the locals don’t really venture out in this sort of weather.”

  “Who does?” Ashley asked, peering out the window and wondering where the parking lot went.

  The man looked back and forth between her and Heather. He appeared to be in his early fifties, and there was a worn wedding band on his ring finger. There was nothing threatening or inappropriate in his gaze, just pleasant honesty. Ashley liked him.

  “Where you headin’?”

  “Back home,” she answered. “Maryland.”

  The guy whistled. “You’ve got quite a drive ahead of you.” His eyes focused on the storm, and he shook his head. “Don’t imagine you’ll be goin’ anywhere tonight. Maybe not even tomorrow.” He picked up a handful of menus and slapped them against his thigh. “Damn. Sure hope you folks can make it back for Christmas.” He turned and waved the menus, encouraging them to follow. “How long you been driving?”

  Ian rubbed
his jaw as they neared an empty booth. “A few hours.”

  “A few hours? Where you coming from?”

  “Quebec.”

  He stopped at a booth near the back of the diner, surprised. “Canada? And it only took you three hours?”

  As they all slid into the booth, Marcus explained, “Our flight had to make an emergency stop at Adirondack Regional. They didn’t have any other flights out of there, and we heard bad weather was coming so…”

  “Ah. Well, it’s here all right. Question is: how long’s it gonna stay?” He distributed the menus. As he did so, he took notice of their attire, their shoes and light shirts peeking out from beneath their coats. “You folks don’t look to be dressed for this sort of weather.”

  “Our luggage is still at the airport,” Ashley said.

  He smiled a warm smile. “Hmm. I imagine you’d like something hot, then. Coffee? Tea?”

  “Coffee,” they all said in unison.

  He smiled again. “Name’s George, by the way.”

  Ian was leaning against the table with his arms crossed and managed to lift a couple fingers in a curt wave. “Nice to meet you, George.”

  George nodded and turned away from them, walking back to the kitchen.

  Ashley looked around the diner again until she found the two people who’d come in right before them. A young boy and girl. The place was empty otherwise.

  “How late do you think he’s open?” she asked.

  Marcus placed a hand on her knee and squeezed it while leaning over and giving her a peck on the cheek. “Don’t know.”

  Ashley watched as Heather pulled her cell phone from her pocket and set it on the table. She punched the first three numbers of her four-digit code…and paused. Her forefinger hesitated, hovering dumbly over the final key as if afraid to unlock the phone. Ashley was sure no one else noticed, but her sister’s hand was still trembling even after unlocking it and turning it around so that everyone could see the radar on her AccuWeather app. The whole state was covered in white.