Demon Jack by Patrick Donovan Read Free Book Online Page A

comfortable as a slab of concrete. Comfy or not, it was a bed, an actual bed, in a warm room. Both were something I hadn’t been able to enjoy for quite some time. I stretched out, propping my back against the corner and closed my eyes, savoring it.
    “E’rything ya need to know is in there,” Maggie said.
    I’d almost forgotten I was holding the folder.
    I opened my eyes and flipped through the folder. There were four police reports inside, each telling a different story, each story united by a single common thread. A suspended police officer had opened fire on a group of squatters before turning his gun on himself. A sixty-year-old wino killed two of his drinking buddies, beating them to death with his bare hands. A sixteen-year-old girl, a runaway, attacked another homeless man without provocation. She ripped his throat out. With her teeth. She was found dead, an hour later from a stroke. The last one was a woman, early twenties. Witnesses claimed to see her put her hand through another girl’s chest. She had been captured and was currently undergoing psychiatric care. They had all happened in the last thirty-six hours. There was one, unnerving common thread - witnesses claimed that the assailants’ eyes had been glowing green.
    “Jesus,” I said, flipping back through the police reports. Little body shaped diagrams marked with notations dictating injury type and locations stared back at me.
    “‘Ardly.”
    I took a long slow breath, trying to clear my head and look past the raging mass of exposed nerves my body had become.
    “This is so fucked up,” I said finally.
    “Can’t disagree there. So what’re ya thinking?”
    “About?”
    She nodded towards the folder.
    “I don’t know. I’m distracted and, surprise-surprise, not exactly a trained investigator.”
    “Try,” she said.
    I flipped through the pages again. It was hard to focus, the words shifting from blurred to perfect clarity and back again. The sound of my pulse hammered in my ears.
    I took a deep, steadying breath.
    “I don’t think it’s someone like me if that helps. If it were, then this thing couldn’t be in so many different places. Contracts don’t work like that. If I had to wager a guess, I’d say some kind of possession, ghost or spirit maybe. Doesn’t seem like a demon would go through all the trouble of taking over someone’s personality only to give it up so quick.”
    “And a ghost would?”
    “I have no idea. I’m not exactly a scholar on this kind of thing. I’m half making this shit up as I go.”
    “Spectacular.”
    “You asked.”
    “So how do you know it’s not someone like you?” she asked.
    “Because it wouldn’t be able to jump around like that, to different people. This is on the assumption that it’s an ‘it’ and not a ‘them’, but a contract binds the soul to the essence of the demon. They become inseparable, it’s the first part of a Becoming.”
    “A what?”
    “Becoming. Soul, then body, and then mind. Soul ties the demon here, keeps them out of the limbo of purgatory. Body gives them a vessel, it’s prep work for the mind, demon makes the last deal and gets the mind. That’s it, you become a backseat driver in your own head until you just.... fade away. That much I do know about. Each step carries a mark.”
    “What kind of mark?”
    “Scar, tattoo, something that contains the contract.”
    “So, that?” she motioned towards my face, or rather, the scars of demonic script covering it.
    “Yep. Subtlety isn’t my demon’s strong suit,” I said, wrapping my arms around my stomach. It felt like someone had poured ice water in my gut. My jaw and shoulder tuned up to a new crescendo of ache. I took another long, deep breath and tried to focus on the conversation.
    “And how deep are you?”
    “Soul.”
    “Uh huh. There a lot of idiots like you?”
    I shrugged.
    “Well, let me ask you this,” she said.
    I ignored her and set the folder on the bed. She was talking, but I