TWENTY-FIVE
When the call had come to inform him of the events at the house, Michael Davis had been in a Barcelona hotel room approving the latest ‘Mister Minx’ T-shirts that they would be selling at the show.
He had been so engrossed in the new designs and the growing potential of the merchandising catalogue that he had forgotten for a moment that Minx was an all too real entity and not just a very marketable special effect.
Now he was reminded of exactly what the creature was.
Davis plunged his hands into his trouser pockets and stared at the house. It was just after 2pm but even out in an open field like this with the sun beating down on him. Davis wished he hadn’t left his jacket in the car. That monstrosity in front of him seemed to rob all the heat, and hope for that matter, from its surroundings.
Nico Gorodetsky was standing next to him. Davis wasn’t a short man but the big Russian was a good head taller than him. Gorodetsky and his team had taken control of the whole debacle with an almost frightening efficiency.
The bodies had been ‘disposed of’ and Max Cramer was already on his way to a Portuguese hospital that the Russian knew would ask no questions about their new arrival for the right price.
Any witnesses on the crew had been briefed and Davis had been surprised that none of them had actually quit over the incident. He guessed everyone surrounding this circus of horrors was becoming more and more desensitised to the bizarre and supernatural.
It would have been easy to believe by the time Davis had arrived that the whole event almost hadn’t happened at all. And if he hadn’t spoken to an alarmingly calm Jeff Miller about what he had witnessed, he might well have half believed the party line they were all now spouting that Max, Keeler and the others had simply quit. After all new crew members popped up and disappeared often here at demon time.
“You should burn that fucking house, Boss.” Nico said. “Preferably with that thing inside.”
Davis nodded. “I know, I know.” He replied with a weary resignation. Common sense always had that ring of truth about it, whether you liked it or not.
He could almost feel the Russian’s eyes on him. “But you won’t,” Nico said. It wasn’t a question or a hope. It was what it was. A fact.
“Greed is a powerful sin, Nico.” He said and craned his neck up to look at him with a faint smile.
The Russian had already turned back to the house, always vigilant around it and its sometime occupant. “And also a fatal one,” he said.
The whole thing had a sickening inevitability about it. A dawning sense of some upcoming self-fulfilling prophecy. Had Minx actually failed in its mission to kill Davis? Or had it simply drawn out the process?
Davis dismissed the notion, or at least pushed it to the back of his mind, where he kept the events of that night he first crossed paths with the monster and that shadowy Kraut.
“Did Cramer say anything, afterwards? Say why he did it?”
“He said the creature was in the walls and had possessed the others, so it could fool the charms and get out into the world. Crucifixion was the only way to stop it.”
“Christ.”
“Exactly.” Nico said without a trace of sarcasm.
“Where’s the little fuck now?” Davis asked.
“He’s safe, still under lock and key in the box. We have him in a lock up just a couple of miles from here.”
Safe? It from us or us from it? Davis pondered grimly.
“And the guards didn’t report anything...” Anything what? Christ get a grip Davis told himself but still he kept rambling. “It didn’t, I don’t know, do anything? Whilst all this was going on?”
“The monster is asleep, miles away. It didn’t do anything.” The Russian told him.
“Course not,” Davis said more in hope than conviction. Because the alternative made his bladder twitch.
“Sir, if I may make a suggestion?” Gorodetsky asked in that polite Russian way of his.
“Of course, Nico.”
“Make this the last show. Let me burn the house and dispose of the creature.”
“Then you’d be out of a job,” Davis told him.
“This job I can do without, boss.”
“You could quit?”
“You know I won’t do that. I agreed to keep you safe whilst you were on this strange journey of yours. And I will, so will my boys.”
Davis turned to Gorodetsky who finally looked down at him. He had heard the Russian and his team were ex Spetsnaz, part of the old soviet special forces. Regardless they were hard as fucking nails. Nico was in his late fifties so was old enough.
Davis had hired him because he was a fucking tank and a very well respected private security contractor. He had expected a mercenary but what he hadn’t expected was the absolute loyalty that came with the appointment. When this guy signed on, he really signed on.
“Thank you, Nico.” Davis said with genuine emotion and wondered if this guy was his only true friend in the world.