The Fell Read online

  ‘If that thing even is a demon,’ Ian said.

  “What?”

  ‘I mean, I have no idea what it was. I know it was just your memory, but I couldn’t… feel it, as creepy as that sounds. I don’t know any demons or spirits who can mess with somebody in the mortal world without crossing over first. Either this one came to your apartment and got right inside your head and your dreams, or…’

  Ben froze and looked up from his phone. “Do not make me guess on that one, Ian.”

  ‘Or it physically took you into the spirit realm, you were really in some desert, and then it dropped you back in your bed with a few hundred grains as souvenirs.’

  This was literally the worst time to have his assumptions confirmed by what Ian suspected, too. Shaking his head, Ben pulled up the internet browser on his phone and searched for the word ‘Gorafrim’. Absolutely nothing came up. Not even in a different language. So the go-to method of finding information was completely useless. Figured.

  Ben realized it had still been less than twenty-four hours since they’d left Richard Monday’s house and his weird attempts to get Ben to join them, but he didn’t think he could sit still or focus on anything else until he at least tried to figure out what that word meant. So, against all his better judgement and the scowl it brought to his face, he started a group text with April, Peter, and—yes—Chase.

  —Anyone heard of ‘Gorafrim’?—

  ‘Really?’ Ian said. ‘You think they know more than me?’

  Clenching his teeth, Ben just stared at his phone. Like that was going to make somebody get back to him at what he now knew wasn’t even 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday. No, he didn’t think all three of his completely alive and in-body friends knew more than Ian, but it was worth a shot. And if nothing else, it would give them a reason to meet up again, hopefully soon.

  ‘Oh, Chase is a friend now?’

  “He can be less annoying than you, sometimes, so yeah. Maybe.” Ben wasn’t kidding himself into hoping Peter would get back to him, but he wasn’t going to leave the guy out of anything. Peter had found The Lesser Key of Solomon before Ben even knew what the heck that book was, and the guy had hit the mark with a few things in the past that Ben might have been just a little too distracted to notice. He needed Peter. They all did, if they were going to keep being a team. He just didn’t know how badly he’d seriously screwed up by not telling all of them—especially Peter—about Ian from the very beginning. They knew everything else.

  He almost fell off the couch when his phone buzzed not even two minutes later and he found a text from Chase.

  —Never heard of it. Want me to look?—

  Well, it was a start.

  —Yeah. Thanks. Let me know what you find.—

  Chase was, after all, the one with access to the expansive labyrinth that was apparently the dark web, which was all that he’d told Ben about it and really all that Ben ever wanted to know. But he’d pieced together a list of demons in the city to take down. Chase’s list was real if not entirely accurate, evidenced clearly by the fact that they hadn’t expected to find a cat-eating spirit or a demon who’d made deals with a Boston family hundreds of years ago that apparently had made it untouchable. Until Richard Monday showed up randomly and saved Ben and his friends from dying.

  Man, he really needed to quit thinking about that creepy, robotic man and his stupid propositions. That wouldn’t get him anywhere. And yet, he still couldn’t help but think that Richard Monday would know what Gorafrim meant.

  ‘Yeah, and he’d tell you to sign a contract for life before he’d be willing to explain it.’

  Probably. Maybe Rufus would be a better choice.

  ‘That guy seemed more… normal, I guess.’

  Yeah, as normal as anybody was who said they belonged to a secret society called the Sectarian Circle with a completely different truth to reveal about the last two thousand years of world history. Normal didn’t really fall into any of this.

  So he’d wait to hear back from April, at least. Peter probably wouldn’t say anything at all, though Ben knew the guy got up this early almost every morning anyway, even on the weekends. They hadn’t been out that late last night. It sure had felt like it.

  For the first time in longer than he could remember, Ben found himself completely without an appetite. Not just a little. Not just bored, or a little picky, or feeling hungry but nothing in his kitchen sounded good. He just flat-out didn’t want food, and that might have been the most disturbing part of any of this. By the time noon rolled around, he still hadn’t eaten. He couldn’t. There was literally a pile of sand on his bedsheets, left there by a demon who’d either crossed over in the night to screw with his head or sucked Ben into the spirit realm in his sleep and screwed with him there. Neither of those options were good. Neither of those things should have been possible at all without Ian at least being a little aware of it. And now, Ben was starting to feel like he had when he was twelve—like almost every day and night after that for over six years until he and Peter came to BU. He felt exposed, hunted, completely incapable of standing up for himself even with the mind-blowingly powerful spirit of his undead friend living inside his body and sharing his head.

  ‘Mind-blowingly powerful, huh?’ Ian laughed.

  Wrong time for that. “Don’t flatter yourself,” Ben muttered, sitting on the opposite side of his couch now and feeling like he was about to explode. His skin itched, urging him to get up and get out and do something because everyone else was just sitting around on a Sunday doing absolutely nothing. He’d practically been abducted—

  ‘Hey, maybe don’t flatter yourself,’ Ian snapped.

  With a growl of irritation, Ben sprang up from the couch and went through his dirty t-shirts scattered all over the living room. No way was he going back into his bedroom right now to try finding something clean to wear. His bed was totally off-limits until he could figure out what the hell had happened to him last night. The fourth shirt smelled less awful than the other three, so he yanked it over his head, put his boots on, and grabbed his jacket.

  ‘Where we going?’

  Ben had absolutely no idea. But he couldn’t just stay here and wait for some kind of answer to come to him. If nothing else in his life had made him lose his mind, that might have just been the only thing to do it. He had to get out.

  On more than one occasion, when the internet had failed to present him with a clear, understandable answer to any question he’d ever had—which was a lot more common these days with all the useless crap floating around—Ben had turned to the Mugar Memorial Library on BU’s campus. But that was completely out of the question now. Anita Librarian worked there, when she wasn’t doing whatever secret-society rituals the Sectarian Circle required of her. Just the thought of that woman made Ben shiver as he walked down the stairs outside his apartment toward the parking lot. He wouldn’t be going back to that library anytime soon. If ever. That place was now the central location for all his current problems.

  ‘All of them?’

  “Shut up.” Ben slammed the car door shut and started his Honda Civic. It was freezing this early in the morning in late February, and he hadn’t grabbed his gloves. Maybe freezing his hands off would get him to quit freaking out.

  If the last twenty-four hours had never happened, and if it hadn’t been so stupidly early, he would have gone to Peter’s apartment. That was a no-go. He couldn’t go see April. Not yet. Not when he still felt like such a piece for having been too proud or lazy or cowardly to just come out with it and tell her what was going on with him. She’d said she wasn’t mad. Ben couldn’t quite let himself believe it. Or maybe that was why he couldn’t talk to her for real right now. It felt wrong. He didn’t need somebody to console him right now, either. He needed some freakin’ answers, and he didn’t think April had any of them. Not the ones he wanted.

  For a minute, he just sat there in his car with the engine on, staring out at the lightening sky and trying to figure out what to do. How har
d did it have to be to just pick something to do? Well, when his entire world had been turned upside down—again—the next step wasn’t exactly right there in front of him.

  Okay, fine. It was. Ben turned his car off, got out, locked it again, and shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. He’d take a walk, then. That was literally his only option right now.

  Three times, he’d grabbed his phone with freezing fingers to type in the number on the stupid business card Rufus Dirre had handed him. Three times, he could have slapped himself in the face. No matter how pissed off Peter was or how convincingly April had said she wasn’t angry, Ben couldn’t go behind both their backs to have a little chat with this Rufus guy. When he did call the man—if he ever decided to call him—his friends would know about it first, and they’d have to agree that it was the best option left. Otherwise, he’d be waving goodbye to all those goons with the Sectarian Circle and writing them off forever. That probably meant they’d have to stop the demon-hunting altogether, because really, three out of the last four demons they’d faced had actually come with a heaping load of ‘here, amateurs, let us help you’ from that same Sectarian Circle. And if he was really to break it down into specifics, that wooden cabinet sent to Peter’s house after they’d banished the demon in the twins’ apartment had pretty much helped them with that demon, too. If they hadn’t gotten that first anonymous package, Ben was pretty sure the blackened demon stone would have burst open in Peter’s apartment and unleashed a super angry being ready to devour them instead of those twins they’d saved. So technically, Ben and his little squad of wannabes couldn’t actually do anything on their own without Richard Monday’s help in some way. The more he thought about that, the more it felt like Ian getting them out of that house on Wry Road and away from the Guardian’s clutches was just another massive fluke. They’d been lucky over the last four months, and that was about it.

  ‘Hey, I knew what I was doing,’ Ian grumbled.

  “And everything else?” Ben muttered, dipping his head against the cold chill sweeping toward him down the street. “You wanna convince me you were totally prepared for all the others?”

  ‘Dude, if you’re still talking about the cemetery…’ Ben chose not to bite that one. ‘Fine,’ Ian continued. ‘Yeah, I screwed that one up. But you know what? If you’d actually let me behind the wheel every once in a while, I wouldn’t have to keep telling you what to do. I could just do it. And we wouldn’t have to wait for those society people to step in and help. But you’re totally cool with keeping me locked up back here like a rabid—’

  “No!” Ben shouted. Then he remembered he was outside again, walking, with plenty of other people either on the sidewalks or driving down the road beside him and plenty more hanging out in the apartments lining the street, probably sleeping in or eating lunch or doing whatever normal people did on a Sunday. He really didn’t want to be that crazy guy talking to himself in public right now. “No,” he whispered, clenching his teeth. “You don’t get to blame me for the fact that you hitched a ride. We had no choice. That’s what you said.”

  ‘Yeah, I did. I just thought you’d be a little more open to the idea of splitting this whole thing fifty-fifty.’

  “Fifty-fifty?” Ben stopped and stared at a fire hydrant. “Are you kidding me? ‘This whole thing’ is my body, dude. Not yours. This isn’t about a fair split, Ian. You think two seconds was enough time for me to seriously consider what this would turn into once we got out of that house?”

  Yes, now he was screaming again, and a few people gave him wary looks before hustling on by to get as far away from the weirdo as quickly as possible. Ben wanted to keep screaming. Instead, he just stood there, frozen outside and inside, now. Everything was falling apart.

  ‘Come on.’ Ian sounded like he was trying to play nice again. ‘It’s not all that bad. You can do some pretty sweet stuff now. Who wouldn’t want to shoot green fire out of their hands?’

  And who did want to have to get skin grafts on their hands afterward? Ben thought of the casts he’d found reaching up both wrists when he’d woken up in the hospital last November. Ian’s green fire had done that to him. And the minute he thought of those casts, an image of the fluttering, rippling rags of that demon from his hopefully-dream burst again inside his head.

  Ben jerked away from the image, which also meant he jerked away from absolutely nothing on the sidewalk. Maybe he’d cried out, or maybe he’d just imagined it. But the memory had actually hurt.

  ‘Dude, what was that?’

  “I have no idea.” Ben shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and forced himself to keep walking. Please, let that just have been his imagination running away with him. He kept his eyes on the sidewalk, which had frozen over with plowed snow pretty much everywhere but the very middle. He didn’t look up at anyone else passing him—not even when he passed a small white dog and its owner, both of whom had just left a huge pile of crap there behind them, for everyone to see. It was still steaming.

  ‘Pick up after your dog!’ Ian yelled, and Ben groaned. The man couldn’t hear Ian, but Ben sure could, and it was way louder than he thought he could handle.

  He glanced at the uncleaned mess, and then another flash hit him, this time of the black sludge he’d seen in that green-tinged desert, moving like tar beneath the sand. This one lasted longer and brought a searing heat burning through Ben’s head. He did actually cry out, then, and the next thing he knew, he was on his hands and knees in the middle of the sidewalk. His numb fingers barely registered the harsh cement and the pebbles and the ice beneath them.

  ‘Ben?’

  What was this? Ben’s arms trembled under the effort of holding himself up, and he tried to slide his feet back under himself to stand. Another flash of that black, noxious ooze completely took over his vision, this time reminding him of exactly what he’d seen filling the rag-demon’s facelessness. Then Ben’s face was on the freezing sidewalk.

  ‘Dude, get up,’ Ian urged. ‘Whatever this is, it’s not good. You gotta get help.’

  Right again, Ian the observant. Ben let out a huge breath and thought his cheek might be sticking to the frozen sidewalk.

  “Oh, my god. Are you okay?” Two white boots stopped next to Ben’s head, and then a woman was squatting beside him, bending over his face.

  Ben blinked up at her and managed to roll his head back just enough. At first, he thought it was April, but this woman had brown eyes. Then he was seeing April, only it wasn’t her there in front of him. It was April in his memories, flashing backward again and again—her shock last night when Peter told him to find his own ride home; her blue eyes so openly gazing into his the night he got that stupid invitation; April laughing at his awful jokes; April hugging him in the university library; April fighting back tears in her apartment as she trembled in Ben’s arms and waited for her stalker ex-boyfriend to show up again in the parking lot. April, April, April.

  Ben was definitely screaming now, because every time the image changed, a fresh blade of searing heat stabbed into his brain.

  ‘Ben!’ Ian shouted. ‘Dude… Ben… I can’t—’

  Then Ian’s voice was gone, replaced by that same terrifying hiss that had spoken to him not from the rag-demon’s mouth but from the entire desert in Ben’s dream. Or not dream.

  “You cannot stop us!” the thing spat.

  Ben thought maybe he was having a seizure. He’d never had one before, but somewhere in his consciousness, he thought he felt his body bucking against the sidewalk. Maybe. Or maybe it was just his heart thudding so hard in his chest, it only felt like something was hitting him over and over from the outside.

  The woman who’d stopped to check on him shouted something, and that was all he could know for sure. Blinking wide and trying to get himself back under control, Ben saw something down the street that looked remarkably like that same white light that had barreled toward the rag-demon in the green hue of the spirit realm. The one that had said, ‘Not this one,’ before smiting
the demon that had abducted him right into nothingness. At least, Ben had hoped that was what happened, but now it seemed he’d been wrong. The rag-demon’s voice had been in his head, sifting through his memories of April, he knew. And this other white light might have had something to do with it. It was just as bright as in his dream-not-dream, just as fast, and it was headed right for him.

  12

  He definitely didn’t expect that bright light to start wailing at him, but wail it did. And then the whiteness of it split in half and became white and red. Then it blinked in and out of intensity, and Ben found himself amazed by the fact that it had taken him this long to recognize an ambulance.

  That was exactly what this was—an ambulance coming down the street, not the white light from his weird dream screaming at him in a super robotic voice. He wondered who was hurt until the ambulance stopped pretty much right next to him on the street.

  ‘Ben?’ Ian asked. ‘Hey, man. Are you still in there?’

  Yeah, Ben thought back, really not sure if he could even use his voice right now. His head hurt so much.

  ‘Dude, I thought… I mean, I couldn’t find you…’

  Ben didn’t have enough of himself pulled together to even try sorting that one out. Two strangers in navy pants knelt beside him, saying something he couldn’t quite understand, and he tried again to push himself up off the sidewalk. This time, at least, he managed not to fall on his face again.

  “…there, buddy.”

  “What?” Boy, his face felt mashed.

  “How you feeling?” One of the men kneeling beside him bent his head even farther until Ben caught sight of the guy’s six eyes and tried to blink them into focus.

  “I… uh…”

  “We’re paramedics. My name’s Ryan. This is Josh. Heard you had a pretty nasty fall.”

  Ben’s head swung slowly to the second man kneeling in front of him now. “I guess.”

  “What’s your name, man?”