THIRTY-SIX
Father Ross slumped down in the tatty arm chair Minx had been hiding behind and surveyed his handy work. There were thin wisps of smoke drifting from two of the destroyed cameras. The other was laid smashed close to where the demon was sitting.
“Why did you do that?” Minx asked. It was looking at the smashed camera as it spoke. No, Ross realised not at the camera, but at the charm that had been attached to it, which had fallen close by.
“Because it needed doing,” Ross replied.
From where he was sat Ross could see that the ornately carved charm looked to be about the size of an American silver dollar, round but with several V shaped cuts in it so it almost resembled a small non-symmetrical Chinese throwing star.
Minx, never taking its blood shot eyes of the charm, edged away from it a little, as if fearful it would leap up at it at any moment.
“If I get rid of all those things, will you be able to leave?” Ross asked.
The demon shook its head ever so slightly. “They wouldn’t let you. Besides where would I go?”
That was a good question. “What can I do to end this?”
“It can only end with the last beat of Michael Davis’ black heart,” Minx said and turned to look at the priest. “Then I will be myth... Perhaps even at peace.”
Ross inadvertently gasped and looked away so as not to meet its gaze. After all despite its condition, those eyes were still those eyes.
“This is not my fault!” Minx said. “I cannot help what I am.”
“I know, but that doesn’t change what you are. What you were created to do.” Ross gestured around the room and to the smashed camera on the floor. “All this is wrong, despite what you are. This is a cruelty you don’t deserve.”
Minx chuckled, it was a horrible gurgling sound that brought bile to the back of Ross’ throat. “Perhaps I do,” it said with a shrug.
Ross couldn’t help but look at the creature again and was damn glad it was staring off into space and not at him. He felt so conflicted. On the one hand this thing was capable of such great brutality, that was after all why it existed.
But still he couldn’t shake the feeling that if anything Minx was the real victim here. It couldn’t help what it was just as Ross couldn’t help who he was. No one, demon or priest alike can run from what they really are deep down. Good or evil, right or wrong. We are what we are.
“You know the worst thing about all this?” Minx said after a long while, clearly the creature had long wanted to unburden itself. “Worse than all this public humiliation? I was created to react, not to think, certainly not to contemplate my existence! I had one purpose and one purpose only from the moment of my conception. To kill, kill, kill Michael Davis. Make him suffer in the most terrible of ways...”
Outside the house in the area hundreds listened on. In the control room and back stage area, crowd, cast and crew alike were transfix. Everyone could hear Minx’s voice at as it blared out of the P.A system and they hung on its every word. It was like some demonic soliloquy delivered to the masses.
High up in the control room Michael Davis didn’t hear the collective gasp from his colleagues as the demon mentioned him by name again. Often many had wondered how he had come across such a creature (those who believed it was real anyway) and now that they had their answer they turned as one to look at the producer.
Davis was standing by the large observation window with his arms wrapped around himself shaking ever so slightly. And although he had his back to them it was clear he was terrified. It was as if his worst nightmare was coming true right before them all. A well-kept secret broadcast for tens of thousands live across the globe.
No one, least of all Davis himself thought to cut the live audio feed to the house. All they could do was hang on the demon’s every heart felt word.
“From the very first moment I can remember,” Minx continued. “It was as if I had spent a thousand years planning my revenge on him. It was though he had done me some terrible wrong. I felt nothing but the burning desire to reap my vengeance on him, although in reality there was no vengeance to take. I didn’t know why he had to suffer, and in those exquisite moments of ignorance that followed my creation, I didn’t care. I was made solely to cause him harm. Although I was only self-aware for a heartbeat or so before entering his hotel room, I had millennia of hate welling up inside me.”
Minx paused for a moment, it seemed to shrink a full foot as it remembered all this. Yes Ross thought to himself, this was a confession. And wasn’t confession supposed to be good for the soul?
“I was in rapture, perched there on his chest,” Minx remembered. “I was going to make his suffering last a week if I could... Then came the pain, my pain, the first I’d ever felt. That bastard Hauser trapping me, mocking me as I writhed in an agony I could not comprehend.” Minx stopped and held up a shaking bony hand which it made into a fist.
“Such pain,” Minx said. “I was only supposed to last as long as it took Davis to die at my willing hands. Then be glad of the release once the deed was done.”
It looked around the room, its prison cell. “I wasn’t meant for this. I wasn’t meant to think, contemplate my place in the world. Just to act on instinct, torture, kill and be gone. Yet here I am, carted from one indignation to the next. With only brief moments of relief from the agony of simply existing. And those moments of bliss? Torturing your kind. Not for hatred of the church, that’s as abstract a concept to me as love or friendship. No, I torture you in lieu of the one human I should have despatched long ago now, Michael Davis.”
There was a long pause as the creature’s words hung in the air.
“I’m so sorry this has happened to you,” Ross finally said without thinking.
The creature smiled. “Not what you expected, am I?”
“No,” Ross answered truthfully. “But,” he continued equally as truthful. “I can’t help you kill Davis.”
Minx shrugged. “Perhaps you can,” it said turning back to the charm on the floor.
Ross saw this. “I don’t think that was designed to kill you.”
“Kill me? No. But it has such power.”
Minx edged a little closer to the charm on the floor, like a child towards a hand grenade.
“I can do things,” it said never taking its eyes of the silver disk. “Even in this pathetic state, the human mind is such a fragile, malleable thing to me.”
“Shit,” Ross looked across the room where the table leg he had used to smash the cameras was still laid.
The demon cocked its head at this and after a moment of deliberation, a smile cracked its face. “No, not you priest.” Minx edged yet closer to the charm, it began shaking in fear or pain, Ross couldn’t tell.
“When you entered this place, when you said his name,” Minx said. “I dared to hope you would be the instrument of my salvation. Yet, that hope was dashed when I looked down upon your face. But now...?
“Minx?” Ross said calculating how long it would take him to get to the table leg and then bash the little shit’s brains in.
The demon stopped within grabbing distance of the charm and Ross wondered if it had lost its nerve. But then it turned to look directly at him and despite his terror Ross somehow found the strength to hold its nightmarish gaze.
Minx smiled and tapped its temple with its left talon. “I have an army,” it said. “They call themselves fans, but deep down it’s more than that. Ordinary people who over time have come to find themselves obsessed with this fucking show, but more so with me. Despite never having any interest in the occult before they cannot help themselves. They have to know everything about me, fact or fiction, they don’t care.”
There was a hint of pride in the creature’s voice now. “It starts off as a mild interest, sparked off by simply hearing the merest syllable spoken by me. It starts with something that simple, don’t ask me how, but I have the ability to hide deliciously subversive, subliminal messages, thoughts really within the words I speak. Nothing more than suggestion at this stage, but with the latent potential for so much more. And so it builds, as they come to every show, read every article. I can feel them, even when I’m in slumber. They don’t meet in groups, they don’t defend my authenticity over the world wide web. They just know. They just know I am real, and you know why? Do you know why they feel so special, so connected to me? Because they are.”
Minx tapped its temple again. “Down through these hideous months I have been planting seeds. In my weakened state and with those fucking charms that is all I have been able to do, but still they are real enough. Little seeds of growing obsession with me. Did you know a man killed four people in this very house? That was because of me. Because of the residue I was able to leave here when I was out of my coffin. Little things left to twist a man’s mind. There have been more still throughout all this. Small things, here and there. But I was still lacking one real thing.”
Minx pointed to the charm on the floor. “Real power.”
“Hey, Davis,” Ross shouted. “You might want to get someone down here. I don’t know what he’s planning but he’s planning something.”
“I don’t know if this will work,” Minx said to Ross and then it grinned showing rotten jagged teeth that were made for nothing but mischief. “But I do know one thing... This is gonna hurt.”
Both Minx and Ross lunged simultaneously towards their weapon of choice. The priest flung himself across the floor and grabbed a hold of the chair leg. He turned towards the demon ready to strike just in time to see it grab a hold of the charm.
Minx screamed at the contact then much to Ross’ horror the creature slammed the charm against its forehead where it stuck.
The demon let out a horrific howl of pain. It was the worst thing anyone within earshot, regardless of geography had ever heard. It was a sound that would haunt thousands for years to come, so raw and powerful if felt like a physical blow.
High up in the production office, the sound engineer screamed in pain and tore off his headphones. He fell back out of his chair and began writhing on the floor in pain. Hands clutched to his bleeding ears.
“Jesus!” Tiff shouted and a couple of the others ran over to him, trying in vain to calm the man as he started fitting.
“Nico...” Davis uttered numbly but the Russian was already out the door speaking remarkably calmly in Russian into his radio.
Down below, three of his security team sprinted out from under the main stand, guns drawn aiming at the house. They stopped when they got to the stage. It was impressively efficient but did little to allay Davis’ growing fear.
“Keep filming, keep filming!” Miller shouted and a Steadicam operator came jogging out and over to film the security guards as if it was just another cop show she was working on.
“What’s going on in there?” Davis said, the fear clear in his trembling voice. He looked at the monitor showing the shot of the living room door in the house. And was thankful it was still closed.
All the whilst Minx’s scream continued through the massive PA system assaulting the senses of the audience and crew alike.