A Course in Demonology

Part 1: The Summoning

“The greatest misconception of summoning is the matter of payment. Not all demons deal in the currency of sacrifice.” — A Course in Demonology: Introduction

The Girl with Red Hair

1

She was the first and only demon I’ve summoned. Her bewitching, spectral visage hovered in the air above me. Silver hair flowed from her head and wrapped around her body in a crude dress terminating in bright red spikes.

“Oh, this is your first time, summoner?” The air grew cold with the throaty whisper of her voice. “Since you’re so new to this,” her lips lingered on the last syllable, beckoning me to her, “I’ll go easy on you.” She winked and danced through the air until a black talon landed under my chin. “But not too easy.”

“No need. I can handle this just fine. Tell me your name,” I said. Demons play a sly game, it’s best not to participate.

“Oh, so demanding! I like that.” The demon pulled her talon from my jaw and leaned back in the air as if laying on a couch, letting her dress split at her thighs and drawing my attention. “I call myself Haapheeshus. And you?”

Still staring at her legs, I shook my head and cleared my throat. My gaze met her lifeless eyes. “Some call me Heim but you will call me Summoner.”

Haapheeshus laughed and for the first time I noticed the rot bleeding from her mouth. I couldn’t take my eyes off her captivating form, but the more I watched her, the more the festering decay propagated. Her nose hung on her face with a few strands of flesh, and her eyes sunk into her skull leaving gaping shadows surrounding her bright gray corneas. A brownish-red substance glazer her lips and oozed from her mouth, dropping to the floor around her as she spoke. The rest of her body remained in a frozen state of half-decay, never progressing, but never healing.

“You’re different from the rest,” she said.

Never let a demon lead the conversation. They will own you if they do. That fiendish old man practically tattooed those words to the insides of my eyelids. Yet I was different. Haapheeshus said so herself. The beautifully horrific wraith of a woman told me I was different. That meant I was better. It meant I was capable.

“No need to play the game, Haapheeshus. I called you here for a reason,” I said.

Haapheeshus leaned forward and squinted the shadows around her eyes. She clicked her talons together and licked her lips. “You are the summoner. What do you ask of me?”

I almost blurted out the truth, but I couldn’t just tell that to a demon outright. Offering information to her would give her ammunition against me in our negotiation. Haapheeshus couldn’t know about her. I needed a distraction, something that would throw her off the scent of truth. The blank walls gave no answers, but the black book lay open on the floor. A drawing of a pitch-black stone adorned the left side. On the right were scribblings about hellstones and their uses. The image reminded me I needed the stones to summon demons. Summoning Haapheeshus used my last one. And I needed them to find her.

“I could do this on my own, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Haapheeshus cooed.

I raised my eyebrow at her. “But as the summoner, I don’t have to, so you will help me.”

“Give me your request, Summoner.” Haapheeshus rolled to her belly and rested her chin on top of her clasped fingers.

“I need hellstones. Get me hellstones, that’s my request,” I said.

Her shrill cackling shook the room. A cold air fell over me as Haapheeshus lunged forward, still hovering over the ground, and ran a hand over my cheek. “Oh, Summoner, your simple request is my pleasure,” Haapheeshus whispered through shivering lips. Her breath tickling the hairs on the inside of my ear. And then the room warmed. The demon had gone without a goodbye. I had come no closer to finding my red-haired girl. The angel that saved me on the day of my parents death.

The pages of the black book fluttered in her absence. I reached down and closed it. Golden letters etched into the leather greeted me as the heavy binding thudded against the thick pages. Those letters burned into my memory from the first moment I saw them. I think I was ten years old, at that damned devil’s house.

2

I met Grandfather for the first time after my parents died. He showed up at the hospital, staring at me with hungry, sunken eyes. The old man towered over me, and at ten I had already grown to the height of a small man at five feet tall. Strange for a boy that age, but not for my family. His long scraggly beard poked at my face as he leaned down to look me in the eye.

“You’ll do just fine,” he said in his deep, sullen voice. His mouth twisted into a crooked smile, he grabbed my hand and led me back to his home in a small Northeastern American city. I found the book while Grandfather and I were in the basement that evening.

“Grandpa? What’s demonology?” My fingers grasped the spine of the thick black book engraved with a golden font. It read: A Course in Demonology.

“Something you don’t need to worry about, you little brat. Now stop snooping around and get back over here. I need you to try this on,” Grandfather said. He sat on a stool overlooking a workbench. A yellow light illuminated the surface from above, leaving the rest of the basement in a soft shadow. I did as I was told and walked over to Grandfather where he slipped a ragged shirt over my head. His eyes flicked up and down, examining me.

“What are we doing?” I asked. I didn’t think he’d answer. He never did.

“Hm, not enough. You’re too clean. And too—unbroken—no one cares about unbroken children,” he said, turning back to his desk and ignoring my question, as usual.

Instead of standing around and waiting for the old man to bring his attention back to me, I brought my attention back to the book. I pulled it from the shelf and almost dropped it, the massive book too unwieldy in my tiny fingers. I lowered the book to the ground and let it fall open to whatever page it would choose.

A wondrous scene unfolded before me. An invisible pen stroked over the empty page until I could make out the images. A girl, my age, with deep brown eyes and long red hair stared back at me. Just the night before this same girl saved me from death. She suddenly grew into a woman and a man embraced her; with a love I’d only seen shared between my parents. I reached for the image, trying to join it, to find a way in and belong to it. Then behind the couple a shadowy figure crept up, striking them down. The dark figured continued forward until he consumed the entire page, his face contorted with an evil grin. Grandfather stared at me from the within the book. Suddenly, wrinkly, hairy hands snapped the tome shut and pulled it high over my head.

“No snooping.” That’s all he said. It’s all he needed to say. The look in his eyes was enough to know what would happen if I didn’t do as I was told. I’m only lucky he never commanded me to do anything I couldn’t stomach—which left him plenty of room to work with. I mean, the alternative was being alone on the streets. What choice did I have?

The rest of that day—and for several weeks after—I spent acting in what Grandfather called “The Grand Canadian” a grift of his own creation. Of course it had nothing to do with Canadians, nor was it grand. He made me practice his clever little routine over and over each day before finally letting me perform on stage. He had finished the raggedy outfit I wore, to put the final touches on his plan. And much to my surprise, it worked.

“Look, kid, I didn’t ask for you. I never wanted you. But I had a kid of my own once and, well, you know. So here you are. Do this thing for me and it’s all we’ll need. I can stop paying so much attention to you and you can stop needing so much from me. Sound good?” He truly had a way of making me feel valued.

“I understand,” I said, but didn’t know what he meant. At the time I thought doing this job might make him stick around. Or that it might be dangerous enough for that girl to come save me again. I wanted more than anything for her to return, but if she wouldn’t then I could at least settle for Grandfather. I didn’t have anything else. He smiled at me and then pushed me out of the car and into a snowbank just outside of the city square. Christmas was only a few days away, the time of year where people are the most generous, and the easiest to con.

Our mark was a lovely young couple. The husband inherited a large sum of money and kept it stored away in the basement of his home while deciding what to do with it. No doubt the man thought it strange his inheritance came as cash, and not through a bank. Though, anyone receiving such a massive windfall wouldn’t think much about its origin or what form it took. Grandfather had worked at a probate lawyer’s office for years before finding the right target. I’m sure he took me in because he needed a helpless child to scam a witless couple out of an inheritance. I didn’t complain. The man promised me twenty-five percent of the haul, plus I would inherit his estate upon his death. I didn’t care much about the money though. Grandfather only spent time with me when we worked on the job.

The couple looked me up and down and melted in my hands as I played my role. Before long, I lived in their house as a servant. But they trusted me. They shouldn’t have. Two weeks into my employment, they left on a trip, leaving me and a few others in charge of caring for the home. I spent the first night watching the other servants. The second night, I snuck to the basement and broke open the safe that held the cash. Half of it would be enough for a family to live off of for two generations. I only took a quarter and delivered it to my grandfather. All this seemed too easy, as if something dropped all the pieces into place for my success, but to me, it was normal for people to just keep massive amounts of cash locked in a safe in the basement. I had no reason to think otherwise. I didn’t know any better. This moronic, over trusting couple stored multiple lifetimes’ worth of cash in the basement of a small estate in the country. And then left it all there while they went on a trip. I later learned that I was not the singular point of success or failure for the plan. No, I had help from an unseen, hellish friend.

To complete the “Grand Canadian,” on the third night, I found Marcus and led him to the basement. The dolt of a teenager who drove the couple’s car, followed me to the safe. “It’s here,” I said to him.

“What’d you find? There’s nothing here but storage,” Marcus said.

“Right there, the safe. Can you get it open? I bet there’s a ton of money in it.” I pointed to the safe while jumping. Marcus walked up to it and turned the handle. The door swung open to reveal the hoard of wealth. His eyes lit up, and he started shoveling cash and treasures into a nearby bag.

“The rich bastards left this thing open. Morons!” Marcus looked at me. “How do I know you won’t talk?”

“I found it! Why would I talk? It’s mine first,” I shouted. He needed to believe me.

“This here score is mine, kid. Don’t go mistaking my politeness to you for friendship. Keep your mouth shut or I’ll kill you. Got it?” Marcus said as he shoved me against the wall.

I tried to force tears and stifled a whimper; I think was pretty convincing at playing scared. “What about a finder’s fee? I should get something.”

“You want something?”

“Ya, I mean you’re too stupid to use it all yourself.” I dropped my head and braced for a punch. Hoped for it even. Maybe if Marcus tried to kill me to steal the money, that red-haired girl would come back. No punch came. Marcus threw me to ground, kicked me hard in the gut, and then dropped a wad of cash in front of me.

“You didn’t see nothing.”

I shot up and wound back a fist but stopped when I thought of Grandfather. If I ruined his job, then he definitely wouldn’t take me back. I wasn’t even sure if the red-haired girl would come back. I couldn’t risk my already for sure position at Grandfather’s side on the off chance that this imaginary friend would arrive just in time to prevent my death, again.

It only took two days for the police to find Marcus. He crashed a car into a streetlight. They found the rest of the loot in the trunk. Not once did they question the missing twenty-five percent. The lazy officers attributed it to Marcus’ theft. For years afterwards the missing cash sparked legendary tales of treasure hidden in the countryside. “The Grand Canadian” worked. I quit two weeks later and returned to my grandfather.

I thought he would’ve been more pleased to see me, but he only offered me a gruff greeting and poured me a cup of orange juice. It was well past noon at that point, hardly the time for a breakfast beverage, but I guzzled it down, if only to appease him. I was 10, I didn’t know any better. The next morning Grandfather handed me a briefcase and said, “Your cut. If you spend it wisely, you’ll be set for life. Don’t be stupid.” And then he walked out the door. I didn’t see him for four months.

3

“You look so lonely.”

That was the first time I heard the soft whisper of the red-haired girl. I couldn’t see her, but I knew it was her. No one else cared enough about me to notice, at least not since my parents died. She came when I needed her most, again. Only two weeks had passed since Grandfather left. We spent every minute together. I was finally not alone.

Four months after she came back, her semi-transparent body sat next to me on the couch in the small, otherwise empty, living room area. We stared at each other, not sure what to do to pass the time.

“Do you want to play a game?” I asked.

“Can’t,” the girl said.

“Why not? Games are fun.”

“I’m a ghost, I can’t play games.”

“We always play house. That’s a game. Let’s try eye spy. You have eyes, right?” I pointed at her beautiful black speckled brown eyes.

“Never played it.” She adjusted her sitting position, though she didn’t sit on the couch so much as she hovered into it.

“My dad used to play it with me, before he died.”

“How do you play?”

“Well, I think of something, and you guess it!” I didn’t actually remember how to play the game or what it had to do with eyes. My dad and I only tried to play once; on the day he died. We hadn’t gotten to the rules part yet and it’s not like Grandfather would have taught me.

“That sounds stupid. How would I know what you’re thinking?”

“That’s why you guess…” I dropped my head and turned away from her.

“Oh, don’t be sad. I’ll play, even if it is dumb.” The ghost girl put a finger under my chin and pushed up. She couldn’t push my chin up per se, but I could feel some sort of presence there and knew what she tried to do. I lifted my head along with her finger.

“Okay, I’m thinking of something that’s red.”

“Is it blood?”

“No.”

“What about an arm that’s cut off?”

“No, it’s nothing like that.”

“So, maybe a heart that fell out of someone’s chest?”

“No! It’s not gross like that. Keep trying.”

The girl looked around, searching for something in the room that was red. She stopped and stared at the brown chair across from us. “That chair?”

“That’s brown. Do you know what red is?”

“Yes, I know, but you are kind of dumb. You might think brown is the same as red. I don’t know.”

I crossed my arms and huffed. “I’m not dumb. Guess again. You have one more try.”

She looked around again and then down at her hands and started playing with her red hair. Her hands stopped and she lifted up the strand she stroked. “My hair!”

“Yea!” And that was the last time I saw the red-haired girl.

4

The girl vanished as soon as we first heard the doorknob turn. I jumped from the couch and rushed to the door. She usually disappeared whenever other people came near the house, but she always came back. Always. It was the one thing I could trust.

Grandfather burst through the front door at 3:30 PM, the first of August, hung his suit jacket, and said, “You’re still here? You don’t need to be.”

“Where else would I go?” I crinkled my nose at his musky cologne smell masked by cigar smoke.

“Anywhere, you’ve got the cash.” He scraped his shoes on the welcome mat.

“I’m only 11 now, no one will let me spend it. If I go out and I’m not in school they’ll take me, find my stuff, and take that too. So, I stay here,” I said.

He looked around, his beady eyes taking in the home. “You took care of the place alright. Fine, stay. Doesn’t matter to me.”

“I wasn’t leaving anyway.”

“That’s fine with me. I only came by to grab a few things. Don’t know if I’ll be back again.” The old man then meandered through the house, lingering at the couch for an odd amount of time. And then he just left without a word.

I rushed through the house, searching for my red-haired girl. I couldn’t find her. Every day for a month I waited for her to come back. I waited in the living room, most of all, where we spent our time playing meaningless games, laughing, and talking. Most often we played house, me pretending to be the man in the image I saw in Grandfather’s strange black book, living the fantasy of the happy family I lost. And then I lost her. My red-haired girl.

A Course In Demonology.

The title of that strange book smacked me in the front of my mind. The image of the ghost girl on the page, the man I pretended to be, and her again. She would have come back, if she could. Maybe she needed my help to bring her back to me. Ghosts were like demons or at least related somehow by the afterlife. She was in the book about demons. That book would certainly have the answer, and it was in Grandfather’s house. The next month I tore through the house, searching for it. And when I was just about to give up and go searching for Grandfather, he walked right back through the front door.

“Hello again, boy,” Grandfather said.

I greeted him at the entryway; glad I had cleaned the house each time I ransacked it looking for the book. “Grandfather.” When I spoke, Grandfather pulled the black book from his shoulder bag and set it on the entry table. He had taken it with him.

“Is there any food?” the old man stepped past me and into the kitchen. I ignored him and reached for the book, but the old man’s wrinkly hand reached over my head and pressed on the cover.

“So, this is why you stayed,” he said. My fingers touched the spine of the book. A shock of pleasure jolted through my arm. She lay in those pages, and he kept her from me.

Grandfather sighed, “Can we do this tomorrow?”

I pulled my hand from tracing the golden letters printed on black leather and said, “I guess. There’s pizza and soda in the fridge.”

“No beer?” the old man winked.

“I can’t—"

“I know, boy. I know.”

5

The next morning, I stood at attention, waiting for Grandfather to lumber down the basement stairs clutching the precious book. For four hours I stared at the stairwell until I heard the cellar door creak open and the old man’s voice scratched through the musty air.

“Come.”

It’s all he needed to say, I was up the stairs before he finished talking.

“Can I see it now?” I asked, panting.

“Breakfast first. Get me some orange juice.” He turned toward the kitchen and left me to catch my breath.

“You mean lunch, it’s not time for breakfast.” I ran to the kitchen.

“Breakfast is the first meal of the day. I haven’t eaten yet. This is breakfast.”

“I had breakfast at eight. It’s lunch for me.”

“We are having breakfast, boy.” Grandfather sat at the wide chair facing the fridge. He waited, staring at me. I hated the way he commanded me with his eyes. It wouldn’t work anymore; I was the master of that house. I took the seat across from him, the tiny round table between us. He lit a cigar, and the rich, nauseating scent of tobacco fill the room. Our eyes met. His black, cranky, bloodshot eyes drilled into me. That would’ve worked when I was ten. But I was eleven that day. I knew you didn’t have orange juice for lunch. It’s a breakfast beverage.

Time passed. Seconds, minutes, hours, days even. No, not days. Probably only a couple minutes, but Grandfather made it seem so until he finally gave in. He broke eye contact, smothered his cigar, and stood to make himself lunch. When he sat back down, I made my own and returned to the chair across from him.

“You’ve grown,” he said through chewed bread and lunch meat.

“Time goes on, we can’t change that,” I said. I didn’t really know what that meant, but I heard it on a T.V. show a few days earlier.

“You’re not like your father. Good. He was a coward. Useless. Not once did he notice the book. You… You I can teach.” Grandfather choked down too big a bite of sandwich and gulped too big a swig of orange juice.

I finished chewing my food, swallowed, and sipped my Coke before saying, “Dad hasn’t been around much.”

“Death will do that.”

“I guess.” I picked up my plate, got up, dropped it in the sink, and returned to my seat.

“You have a lot to learn. There is power in this book. If you want to learn, you have to promise me one thing.”

“I’ll do it! What is it?” The red-haired girl’s face bombarded my thoughts, but a breeze filled with old man cologne and tobacco slammed me back into reality.

“You have to promise that you will always serve me as my apprentice and I your master. Until I release you. Do we have a deal?”

“Yes!” I yelled.

“This means you cannot do anything with this book or use anything you learn without my express permission. The minute you do, poof.” Grandfather waved his hands. “Both me and this book are gone. Got it?”

“Yes, yes, I get it.” Naivety overcame sense in my youth.

“Very well, let us begin,” Grandfather said, dropping the thick black book onto the table. The cover whipped open, and a rush of howling wind tore through the dining room. Thick words on the first page seemed to glow as the book absorbed the light of the room into itself. Lightbulbs buzzed louder and louder as they dimmed. Then, nothing. The book sat on the table, dull and unexciting while the lights hung silent from the ceiling. A piece of ordinary paper was taped on the inside of the front cover. While the opening pages of the black book glowed in the sunlight with a yellowish hue, this paper was stark white. It didn’t belong there, yet there it was and at the top of the paper I saw the word introduction penned out in neat handwriting.

“Demonology is the study of Demons. Those who study them are warlocks,” he began, answering the question I had asked him months earlier.

“Does that mean I’ll be a warlock if I read this book?” I pointed at the page.

“No.”

“Are you a warlock?”

“No.”

“Then where did you get the book?”

“Where I got it.”

“But where did it come from?”

“Whoever wrote it.”

“Who was that?”

“Enough questions. Just, listen.” Grandfather turned the book toward himself and read aloud:

“Introduction. Demonology is the study of demons. Those who study them are warlocks. If you think reading this book will make you a warlock, you are sorely mistaken. Shut the book now, throw it out your window, and never speak of it again. Do not worry about where the book ends up, it will find a good home. You, on the other hand, must forget about this pipedream of yours to become a warlock. You can’t do it.

Now, that does not mean you cannot study demons. Nor does it mean you cannot summon them. It simply means you cannot be a warlock. Yes, it is true that typically warlocks study demons, but not every person who studies a demon is a warlock. And not every warlock studies demons. So, while this book will not make you a warlock, it will make you something better. A summoner.

You see the greatest misconception of summoning is the matter of payment. Not all demons deal in the currency of sacrifice. Yet, warlocks exclusively deal with demons who require pacts signed with a sacrifice. Honestly, they misunderstand demons and give the whole business of demonology a bad name. Though the pages of this book are written from a warlock’s perspective, you must ignore that and never try to act as a warlock. You will not and cannot become a warlock. Instead, you must discern for yourself what information is useful to you as a summoner, and what is safe to use. With this book you become a true demonologist. Not a warlock, but a summoner.”

I sat and listened as Grandfather read through the first pages of the book in his deep, careful voice. I’d never heard so many words come from him before. The old man scarcely said more than a sentence at a time. He was nothing short of terse. That changed that night. Grandfather became more, he became my teacher, my mentor, my master in demonology.

6

“You’re not ready,” Grandfather stood over me, his shaking hands drenched from the pouring water. Moments before, a fire hydrant had burst, failure is the typical reaction for human devices in the presence of a demon, though I half suspected they broke things on purpose. The demon stood over nine feet tall. It was thin, thinner than any man. Its head looked strangely human, but its face stretched and melted into its neck. I don’t know if demons purposefully choose their forms to disturb us, or if they are cursed to withstand such horror whenever they happen to look upon themselves. Some have theorized that demons are the tortured souls of mortals whose minds had become disfigured in life—their forms representative of their moral failures. From the ten years of experience, I gained with Grandfather up to that point, I could say that’s only partly true. I was certain some are the souls of long past mortals. Though others I couldn’t be sure and the black book made no mention of the origin of demons. Certain demons had a quality about them, something discernible only through perception. This particular demon had been one of them.

It was, unfortunately, a danger of the trade. Sometimes demons didn’t want to do what they were told, and as summoners it was our job to contain them. People came to us for our help in dealing with the otherworldly and in our expertise, they trusted us to keep them safe. Both Grandfather and I held a reputation for keeping people safe as the only purveyors of the service. Grandfather attributed that success to the rules he set. Chief among them, to never let me summon or champion the discourse with a demon. That day I tried anyway. Grandfather summoned the demon; I took over the dialogue.

“Stay out of this!” I yelled. “I can do this. You have nothing more to teach me. It’s been ten years! Let me try.” I sat on the ground in a puddle of water that deepened as the stream from the hydrant failed to relent. It dowsed us all in an icy swaddling.

“Do it then,” Grandfather said.

I stood, pushing Grandfather away from me, and confronted the demon. “Maximo!” I shouted.

The demon’s body contorted backward, bending its head down its backside to meet me at eye level. Its hands rested on the asphalt as the eyes rolled upward and mouth sank down, setting its face upright on its overturned head. “Yes?” the demon’s whisper tickled my ears, though its mouth never moved. Behind the word was a challenge. It wanted me to try and send it back.

“You’ve done what you were called for. You can go now,” I said.

“Oh, I hadn’t noticed.” Maximo’s body flipped around in a sudden motion, its head staying still while the rest of the body twisted to face me. The arms gripping the ground widened and took on the bulk of legs, all the while the legs thinned and lifted off the ground to straighten the body. Chest dropped below head. Shoulders ballooned into hips. Skin textured into cloth. And finally, a man-shaped demon, appearing to wear a suit, stood before me. Though its eyes still stretched too far below its nose. And its chin fell too far into its neck.

“Our agreement states you must leave after your request as been completed. The building is destroyed. You’ve done it. Now leave.” I thought I stepped forward, but my feet couldn’t move. Maximo held me in place with its wide eyes.

“Agreement? I’m not familiar with any agreement with you. Enlighten me.”

“The agreement that let you cross over. You have to follow it.”

“I have an agreement with him, not you.” Maximo pointed to Grandfather.

“And me,” I said.

The demon laughed, its mouth sliding up and down a flat face. “No, not likely. You are nothing compared to him. Strange that such power doesn’t pass through the family? Perhaps he can withhold it from you. Better keep an eye on that old man. He is dangerous. To you.” Maximo stepped forward, knocking me aside. I fell into the asphalt, bruising my shoulder.

“Stop, Maximo,” Grandfather said.

“If it isn’t the Trickster! Master of Lies!” Maximo stopped and turned its head around.

“It is. Now please, let us have a drink.” Grandfather gestured to the bar across the street.

“I would love to,” Maximo said.

“After you.” Grandfather held his hand out toward the bar. Maximo offered a nod and then stepped sideways toward the road, keeping one eye on Grandfather and the other on me. Grandfather followed close behind. The moment the demon stepped out of the flow of water; it vanished. I jumped to my feet and ran toward the bar, but Grandfather stopped me.

“It’s gone,” he said.

“Where? Where’d he go? I have to send him back. I need to send him back! I can do it!” I shouted.

“He is back. He’s gone. If you paid any attention you’d know why,” Grandfather said.

“I could have figured it out! I would’ve done it. You didn’t need to step in!” I curled my fingers into a fist, but before I could lift my arm Grandfather punched me in the gut and then slapped me across the face.

“Shut your whining mouth. I said you weren’t ready. And you’re not. At this rate, you never will be. Go back home. Read your book. We’re done for the week. When I decide you’re ready to sit and passively observe, you can come back. Until then, I’m done with you.”

“You’re making a mistake! I am ready. You’ve put me on the sideline for ten years and haven’t once let me try to handle a job on my own,” I said, wiping water from my eyes.

“I kept you and our clients safe. Maximo could’ve killed you and me. But I got it under control and sent it back. You made it worse. Now shut up and go home. I have business to attend to.” Grandfather turned away and walked back across the street to the car. The hydrant had stopped spraying water when Maximo disappeared. All that remained was a puddle of water that would probably freeze overnight. Someone might trip on it, or their car might lose control. That wasn’t any of my concern. I tried to think of my red-haired girl’s face but could only draw up a blurry image. Even the picture drawn in the black book, which never appeared again, faded in my mind. Inconsequential details remained, like the shape her fingers or the curve of her silver dress on her hips. I very well could have made those up to fill in the gaps of a youthful memory, but I held onto them because without them I had nothing. Ten years of studying and I still couldn’t even talk to a demon with authority, much less summon one. Fear hung over me as I started to think I might never find her.

7

I learned under Grandfather for another five years and not once did he allow me to summon a demon or even talk to one. He barely offered me the title of Journeyman Summoner. During the months he left me as a child, he had gone in search of a property in the city. A place where he could open shop as the sole provider of demonic intercession. Grandfather found a run-down office space on the third floor of an eight story multi-purpose building in the old, dilapidated down-town. The first floor hosted an Asian market. The second, an illegal casino. The third, office spaces for criminal fronts. And the rest as residential space, in which we made our new home. For those fifteen years we ran the shop together. For fifteen years he held me back.

On a brisk Sunday morning I meandered through the first-floor market. It smelled of fish, chickens, and incense. At least they kept the windows open. Every Sunday morning, I went down there to get Qing-jao’s breakfast dumplings. I’d do anything for those egg and sausage filled puffs of dough.

She looked sorrowful that morning as if she knew what happened to Grandfather. She couldn’t have known, she never met him. He didn’t really get along with people. Hell, we barely got along enough for him to teach me. Even then the book did most of the teaching, he just happened to own the book.

Qing-jao handed me the plate of dumplings and offered a small bow. I returned a deeper bow. I never knew if that was proper custom, but I felt it rude to not return the greeting. Someone waves, you wave back with gusto. Someone flips you off, you flip them off with two hands. Her hands trembled lightly as her fingers grazed across my own. I should have stayed in that moment. It would have been the right thing to do. But I couldn’t. I had to go upstairs. I had to get breakfast to Grandfather before it became lunchtime. I didn’t pick up lunch, I picked up breakfast.

She said nothing, as usual, but the way she looked at me made me think she somehow knew. Something had told her. Someone. I carried my tray to the elevator and hit the button for the third floor.

“Hold the door!” A man shouted as he stumbled down the hall. I pressed the door close button. He didn’t make it.

“That was rude,” said the raspy whisper of the woman behind me. I didn’t remember seeing a woman in the elevator before I got on.

“My dumplings are getting cold,” I said. There was a cold pause in the air as the elevator lurched upward.

“Oh well, it was him or the dumplings,” the woman said, breaking the silence.

“What are you even doing here?”

The whisper of a voice cooed in response, and I felt as if gentle hands settled around my waist. “To comfort the sorrow of a man who is lost and to send you off to find your way.”

I wanted to turn to tell her off, but the elevator dinged for the third floor, and I didn’t have time to chat with strangers on an elevator, my dumplings were getting cold.

I stepped through the elevator door, ambushed by the stench of burning flesh. Up until then I didn’t know what burning flesh smelt like, but I recognized it anyway. Anyone would know the smell. Even for our strange multi-purpose building, the smell didn’t belong. No smoke rose from any doors or pooled on the ceiling. The smell just lingered, like the pervasive scent a smoker leaves in his own car. I paid it no mind. I should have. Just like Qing-jao, it seemed like those who wandered in the hall knew. Grandfather’s accident never made a sound. Not a single person reported hearing an explosion, seeing a flash of light, or even smelling the pungent odor of burned flesh that I know filled the halls of the third floor.

I opened the door to find the burnt corpse of Grandfather withering away into a pile of ash in the middle of the reception area. The bag of dumplings crinkled as I dropped them to the counter. Grandfather’s arm fell away as I stepped over him. Just beyond the reception desk, into Grandfather’s office, I saw the pentagram drawn in blood on the floor. In the center was Grandfather’s—now my—black book. As I stared at the almost unrecognizable body a deep pain gurgled from my center. It rumbled and stung in my gut as a growl burst from my stomach. Grandfather’s ashen, withering corpse just lay there taking up space in my office. And all I could think about was how good those dumplings would taste after I cleaned up his mess.

It was his own fault. He ignored the first thing the black book taught. A summoner is not a warlock. Summoning is done two ways, summoning higher demons as a warlock or lesser demons as a summoner. A warlock summons a demon using a summoning circle, and then makes a pact with the demon in order to achieve some sort of goal. The pact will always end with the demon killing the warlock. It will happen, either immediately or a few seconds after immediately. A summoner summons demons using a hellstone. Which is much more akin to asking a friend to help move. With a hellstone a summoner can call upon a lesser demon and make a deal with said demon to help the summoner with whatever task. It can be something as simple as doing the dishes or as complex as helping a grandson steal a sizable inheritance from a wealthy family. Lesser demons are simple creatures and so long as the summoner is savvy enough, he can make them do almost anything for little to no cost. For all of his shortcomings, Grandfather made it an easy business. Something no one had done before him. Something I had no talent to do.

Despite all that, Grandfather never stopped trying to find ways to trick a higher demon into doing his bidding. I knew it would never work. Only three men had ever done so, and the secrets of those warlocks had been lost to time. The only ones who can summon a higher demon and live are the warlocks descended from one of those three families. Hence, a summoner can never become a warlock. It just can’t be done. But Grandfather never did listen well.

By the time I reached down for the black book Grandfather’s body had faded into a black pile of ash. I’d have to clean that up at some point. Even in his death he found ways to annoy me. Lumps of burned hellstones adorned the points of the pentagram. Ten points, ten hellstones. The last of our supply. It’s not as if hellstones are in short supply, they’re just a pain to get. Grandfather always kept at least one stone to summon a demon to get us more. While it bears a striking resemblance to obsidian, the hellstone comes directly from hell, not a volcano. A demon can slip out of our world, and back in with a bucket of hellstones in a matter of seconds. The only other way Grandfather told me to get them was to buy them from a warlock family, but we had never obtained them that way, so who knows if that’s true. Grandfather had an aversion to the truth most days.

I stood up holding the book and let out a sigh. Grandfather wasn’t a good man, but I would miss him. If only because he made finding hellstones so easy. It must have been a last middle finger to me for him to die using up the last of our stock. Then I saw the letter on the reception desk, weighed down with a single stone. I picked up the letter and read.

“Listen here you useless kid,” the letter from that old man read, written in a scrawl neater than his usual handwriting. “This is the last hellstone. I’m dead now. Don’t touch the shop or the book. You’ll screw it up.”

“It’s nice to know he cared,” I said, crumpling the paper and tossing it onto Grandfather. The ashes cleaned up easier than I expected. The vacuum had no trouble with the fine particles. I’m just glad they didn’t get wet. I dumped the vacuum canister into the trash and looked to the paper bag on the desk. No doubt my dumplings got cold. I should’ve eaten them with Qing-jao, before I got onto the elevator, or in the hall before I opened the door. Still, I knew that Grandfather was not what that voice on the elevator had warned me of. Because what caused me sorrow, for the loss of it, had been lost before I had met Grandfather. And he did not replace it. But perhaps now that he had died, I could find some sucker with better talent than me to find my way.

End of excerpt.