Read Online Demon Jack by Patrick Donovan - Free Book Online Page A

quietly.
    I could see the gears in her head turning things over and weighing options. I could also see that she was terrified. Something had invaded her, raped her from the inside of her head out and caused her to do things that were a direct contrast to her nature. It had used her as a murder weapon, a sentient tool that got to see everything it was doing without any control what so ever to stop it from happening.
    “Tell us what ‘appened,” Maggie said gently, reaching out to put her hand over Lucy’s. The girl seemed to settle at the touch, her eyes snapping over to Maggie and then settling on her with a distant stare. I smelled Maggie's perfume again, washing over me in a thick cloud.
    “I left home, a... a few weeks ago. I lived in Missouri.”
    Maggie nodded.
    “Go on.”
    “I... I didn’t get along with my parents,” Lucy turned her head, staring out the window. “They always wanted me to be this, I always wanted to be that, and we argued. That wasn’t why I left though. I mean really it wasn’t, it was for something different. They liked to lock me away in hospitals. All the time. Ever since I was a little girl. Just lock me away and forget me because I was strange or stoned. Usually stoned, at least when I was older. I guess I didn’t make their cocktail parties too much fun.”
    Maggie kept her attention on Lucy, encouraging her with a nod.
    “I heard things. Lots of things. Voices.”
    “And you couldn’t help it,” Maggie said quietly. “So you got stoned.”
    She shook her head. I could see the glistening trails the tears cut down her cheek. I lowered my head. I couldn’t look at it.
    “No. I couldn’t and it made me sad because I... I didn’t want to hear them. I didn’t want them to shut me away. I wanted to play outside, and run around... and not hear all the words these dead things said.”
    “Dead things?” Maggie asked.
    “Yes. Yes. Dead things. Dead people mostly. I even heard a cat once. There was never anything there but the words. It was like a noise I couldn’t get rid of.”
    For a long moment I said nothing, letting silence hang in the air.
    “What happened when you killed the man?” Lucy asked, looking towards me. “In prison I mean?”
    I lifted my head, startled. Maggie was staring at me. Lucy looked at my face, her eyes going back to that glassy, distant stare. She was looking beneath the hood, directly into my face, her jaw hanging slightly open. She didn’t seem scared so much as entranced.
    “Oh my God. Your face is burning,” she said quietly, her voice barely a whisper. “All the pictures on your face are on fire... but they aren’t.”
    I reached up, touching the scars along my cheek. They felt the same as they always did, slightly raised lines in my skin, each one another crossed T or a dotted I in the deal that left me without a soul.
    “You’re so empty,” she said, standing slowly. The act itself was almost poetic in its simplicity. The motion of her body rising, a normally simple act, was like a sonnet, rolling and gliding. I shook my head, fighting to ignore it, to dismiss the weird wash of sensation that ran over me. Pretty girl and no love life to speak of, that’s all it was.
    She walked towards me, and with gentle hands pushed the hood back from my face. Her touch was cool and light as she traced the demonic characters with her fingertips. Her eyes seemed to focus on me and something in my stomach did an excited backflip.
    “You’re... you’re... you’ve touched them, the things that touched me. Why are you here?”
    “What do you mean?” I asked, gently taking her hands, pushing them away. Despite her looks and the effects they were having on my anatomy, her touch bothered me. I couldn’t explain why, just that it made me feel different and nervous.
    “You smell like it, you...” She let her voice trail off. As quickly as she had stood, she turned around and went back to her seat on the bed. “When... when it happened. I got angry.