Today was the most important day in twenty-six-year-old Ricky Harrison’s life. He had been planning it, dreaming about it, almost couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t getting ready for the Big Surprise at the Mall of America.
He was so excited he could barely make himself walk slowly. It was like the excitement was going to burst out of him. But he did walk slowly. Yes, sir, he did. He did exactly what Mr. Nemo had told him, just like he’d showed him. Down the sidewalk—without looking back at the van! Mr. Nemo had said not to look back at the van because there were security cameras you couldn’t see, and if they recorded Ricky looking back at the van, that would spoil the surprise.
Ricky wanted to look back, though, to see how proud Mr. Nemo must be of him, but Mr. Nemo wouldn’t be proud of him if he looked back, so he didn’t. He looked forward at the big red-white-and-blue star on the sign above the south entrance to the Mall of America. And he thought about the Big Surprise he carried. Just thinking about it made his stomach feel all funny—almost like being scared, but good scared, not like the scared he’d felt the day he met Mr. Nemo.
He had been bad scared that day when his bus broke down and he didn’t know what to do. He never got frightened when he knew what to do. And he always knew what to do—except that time.
On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays Ricky got on the number nine bus at the stop on the corner of the streets that bordered CALADS. Waited in the shade under the big sign in front of the building that said Care and Assisted Living for Adults with Down Syndrome. And then he got off at Magnolia Street in front of Anderson’s Supermarket where it was his job to bring in the shopping baskets out of the parking lot and line them up in neat rows inside. On Tuesdays and Thursdays in the summertime, he got on the number twenty-two bus going in the other direction and got off at Hadley’s Nursery, where he watered plants and sometimes they even let him plant flowers in little green plastic containers to sell.
He knew how to get back on the buses, too, and ride them home to CALADS. But he didn’t know what to do when the bus stopped and didn’t take him all the way. The motor of the bus had made a funny sound and then stopped running, and the bus driver had tried to start it a whole bunch of times, but it wouldn’t start. The bus driver had cursed a lot and had gotten out and stood in front of the bus with the hood up, saying awful words real loud, and then the other people on the bus had brushed past where Ricky was sitting to get off the bus and find another way home. But Ricky didn’t know any other way home. Mrs. Shewmaker had told him what to do if he ever got lost, but Ricky was so scared he couldn’t remember what she’d said. He tried to remember and thought as hard as he could as tears streamed down his cheeks.
Then Mr. Nemo had gotten on the bus and asked if Ricky needed a ride, and Ricky had been so upset he could only nod, and then they both got into Mr. Nemo’s van and Mr. Nemo had taken him to Center Street, a block from the front gate of CALADS. He told Ricky not to tell anybody about riding home in the van because there was probably some rule about not getting into a car with strangers.
So Ricky hadn’t told anybody.
The next time he got on the bus, Mr. Nemo was riding the bus, too! And he was there every day after that, in the morning and in the afternoon. And he’d sat with Ricky and said he wanted to be Ricky’s friend. Ricky had never had a real grownup man friend, and Mr. Nemo said there was probably a rule against that at CALADS, too, so he would have to be Ricky’s “secret friend.” Ricky had never had a secret, either, and having one had made his belly feel funny, but good funny.
And then came the day that Mr. Nemo said Ricky should tell a fib, only a little one, at the supermarket—that he didn’t feel good and needed to go back to CALADS. But Ricky didn’t go back to CALADS. Mr. Nemo took him to the Nickelodeon Universe at the Mall of America.
When Ricky thought about that day, his whole head filled up with so many things he couldn’t think about them all at one time. He met SpongeBob SquarePants and Plankton and Dora and rode the carnival rides. Mr. Nemo bought him ice cream and popcorn and cotton candy. Then he dropped Ricky off at the bus stop right before the one at CALADS so Ricky could get on the bus and get back off there.
It was their secret, of course. Such a wonderful secret that Ricky wanted to tell his friend Robert or Mrs. Shewmaker. But he couldn’t. He had lied, so he couldn’t tell anybody.
Ricky had sneaked away from work to go with Mr. Nemo to the Nickelodeon Universe two more times. Both times, Mr. Nemo said he was sad that he couldn’t take Ricky there during the Universe of Light Show that was held every night. He’d told Ricky all about it, though—the music and smoke and puddles of spotlights on the floor and the crowd of children who chased the moving lights and danced to the music. Ricky wanted to see the Universe of Light Show more than he’d ever wanted anything in his whole life.
And right now, in a few more minutes, he would be there. He wouldn’t just see it, though. Mr. Nemo had arranged it so Ricky Harrison would be the star of the whole show! Sure, he was going to get into a lot of trouble for sneaking out of CALADS. But Ricky didn’t care. It’d be worth it when he sprang the Big Surprise!
He walked slow and steady—that was what Mr. Nemo had said, “slow and steady.” He wore a big yellow SpongeBob SquarePants backpack that Mr. Nemo had given him while they were in the back of the van. It had an extra strap that fit around his chest and fastened in the back. When Mr. Nemo pulled it tight, it was uncomfortable and the pack was heavier than Ricky had thought it’d be. But Mr. Nemo had explained that even though one little yellow canary didn’t weigh much at all, a whole backpack full of them weighed a lot! He said it was a good thing Ricky had big strong muscles so he could carry such a heavy backpack. When Mr. Nemo’d said that, Ricky had stood up straight and pretended the pack didn’t weigh anything at all.
As Ricky got to the south entrance door, a young mother with two children stepped out and held it open for him.
“Don’t leave now,” he told her. “You’ll miss the Big Surprise.” But she acted like she didn’t even hear him and kept walking. Ricky hated it when people acted like they didn’t see him or hear him, like he wasn’t even there at all. But every eye would be on him tonight. In fact, Mr. Nemo had promised him that after he pulled the string on the Big Surprise in the backpack, everyone in the whole country would be talking about Ricky Harrison.
Theresa looked at Jeff Kendrick. “You want to know what qualifies us here in this room to fight this evil. But the thing is we ain’t qualified, none of us. God ain’t looking for qualified. He’s looking for willing.”
She paused and took a deep breath. “And Mr. Chapman Whitworth knows we been tasked to do this and that we’ve took it on and I ’spect ain’t nothin’ he won’t do to us now, short of killin’ us. What’s done happened ain’t peanuts compared to what’s comin’.” She stopped when the memory of the strip search at the Cincinnati Jail bloomed bright and real.
No, can’t think about that, about the wailing and the stink.
Her words hung in the air until Daniel spoke.
“We made a mistake before. We went after Chapman Whitworth. This time, we have to go after it, the efreet. We have to find it and—”
“Send it back to hell where it come from,” Theresa finished for him.
“Perform an exorcism?” Crock asked. “The Catholic Church has been doing that for centuries—they’re experts. Can’t we just ask—?”
“This ain’t no exorcism. We ain’t gonna kick the demon out of Chapman Whitworth—we gotta drive it back out of this world. A ruler of demons has been summoned from the darkest pit—” She lifted her hand and waved off the questions she could see coming. “I don’t know how it got summoned. Bishop knew all that kind of thing, but I don’t. All’s I know is it’s our job to ‘un-summon’ it.”
She looked at Becca. “If you, child, can figure out how we go ’bout doin’ that.” She nodded in the direction of Bishop’s office. “The answer’s in there somewhere. Among his books and papers. He found it and we got to find it, too.”
“You’re going after this…thing…and you don’t even know how to fight it?” Jeff asked. She didn’t hear no skepticism now, though, not after what Jack’d said.
“It ain’t like you can Google ‘efreet’ and find out all about it. Ain’t nobody ever whipped out their cell phone and snapped a picture of one. Demons is as different as people. There ain’t no cookie-cutter description that’ll cover them all. Some of them’s smart and some’s dumb as a sack of doorknobs. Some’s strong and powerful and others is wimpy. This here one, an efreet, is a king—a ruler. He’s smart—smarter than we are.”
“If your husband knew how to destroy it, why didn’t he tell you?”
“He might have…if I hadn’t been so tore up I wouldn’t listen. That was right after we lost Isaac and I wasn’t fit for nothin’. But most times Bishop didn’t talk about none of that stuff, what he was readin’ and figurin’ out. When I’d ask, he’d get this awful look on his face and say what he was diggin’ into was foul. He wasn’t gonna bring that stinkin’ filth out beyond that door and pollute our lives with it. You know how they say, ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.’ Well, what happened in that room stayed in there, too.”
“Then why don’t we take shifts and systematically go through every scrap of paper in that room, piece by piece,” Crock suggested. “With six of us, it shouldn’t take—”
Theresa barked out something like a laugh. “Even if they was sixty of us, it wouldn’t be no short job. My Bishop, he was…a pack rat. Most of what’s in there is books—the kind you can’t order off Amazon. Scrolls and such. But they’s other stuff, too. That bulletin board by the door’s got Post-it notes on it dating back to the Carter administration, layered one on top of the other.” She sighed as the memory of his smiling face faded from her mind. “But wouldn’t none of us see the answer”—she looked pointedly at Jack—“even if it was written in purple in Hebrew.”
“Destroying a Monster for Dummies,” Daniel mumbled.
“Don’t try this at home,” Jack followed.
“He come down to dinner that day, the day he figured it out, just picked at his food, couldn’t eat. Said he’d unraveled the mystery, but said ‘mystery’ like he was making fun of it and kind of grinned. He got real quiet then, said the doin’ of it was gonna take everything there was in him.
“I asked him what he was gone have to do, what words he was gone have to say or what ritual from them books he was gone have to perform. He patted my arm and told me it wasn’t so complicated he’d need instructions. Then he said, ‘Just ’cause it ain’t some complex, involved thing don’t mean it’ll be easy. Some of the simplest things in life is the hardest to do.’”
Theresa turned toward Becca.
“Her and Andi—they got the knowing like Bishop did. Without that, you ain’t gone see whatever it was Bishop seen.”
She turned back to the others. “Bishop had a plan to get rid of that monster, but you children went on ahead without him.”
Jack and Daniel exchanged a look; Becca kept her eyes down.
“So where is it? This demon thing?” Crock asked.
“Somewhere in the thousands of miles of caves under Caverna County, Kentucky,” Daniel said. “Now, if one of us could just remember where.”
Jeff was incredulous. “You ran across a demon when you were twelve years old and you forgot where you left it? Like losing your bicycle or a pair of mittens?”
Rage washed over Daniel’s face like white fire. When he spoke, he ground out the words through clenched teeth. “We didn’t misplace it! That whole summer was wiped out of our minds.”
“Wasn’t the efreet done the wipin’, though,” Theresa said. “They ain’t got the power to control the minds of them that walks with the Light.” She stopped, then muttered under her breath, “Mess with their minds, yes--make 'em see things ain't really there, maybe. But not control. Likely your own mind done the erasing. Or God did.”
“It doesn’t matter why we don’t know where it is,” Jack said, irritated. “There are four people who do know. One of them is Chapman Whitworth. The other three are possessed children in Bradford’s Ridge.”
Theresa saw that Jeff was struggling, belief and unbelief warring inside him. She figured the seed of belief Jack’s words earlier had planted would likely get choked out in the end. It was that way with most people.
“So we go find those kids and start asking questions, shake some trees and see what falls out.” Now that there was something to do, a bit of life and energy returned to Jack’s voice.
“You got any time off coming?” he asked Crock.
“Only about twenty-five years of vacations I never took,” Crock said.
“Then we’ll go—”
“Count me in,” Daniel said. “And we need Becca to see the demons.”
“Becca can’t drop what she’s doin’ here and go runnin’ off after that efreet,” Theresa said. “She’s got to figure out what to do once we find it.”
He thought a moment, then added reluctantly, “Andi, then. I’ll have to take her out of school.”
“They’s some things that’s more important than learnin’ the multiplication tables.”
“How does day after tomorrow sound?” Jack asked.
Daniel and Crock nodded.
“There may be something I can do,” Jeff said, and all eyes turned to him. “So we’re clear on this, I don’t…all this about demons and—”
“You ain’t convinced,” Theresa said. “We get that. So what’s your point?”
“I am convinced that for some reason Chapman Whitworth is out to get you. I’ve seen evidence you can hold in your hand that he played some part in the murder of Gerald and Minerva Cohen. Not enough proof to charge him, but…” He paused, and when he spoke again, she could hear the ring of cold steel in his voice. “I’d like to help you take him out.”
“Why?” Crock asked. He cocked his head to the side. “It’s been my experience people don’t usually poke a stick at a junkyard dog unless they’ve got a pretty good reason. What’s yours?”
Jeff studiously did not look at Daniel, but Daniel’s eyes were boring holes into Jeff.
“The man has hurt innocent people who…didn’t deserve to die.”
He was talkin’ about Miss Minnie and Mr. Gerald, of course—but that didn’t explain the look that flashed across Daniel’s face when he said it.
“I may still number among the ‘deluded masses,’ but I might be able to come up with a card or two I could play in Chapman Whitworth’s game.”
“Such as?” Jack asked.
“Let’s just say I know a guy who knows a guy…who has something on Whitworth—at least he claimed to years ago. Blackmail material or so he said. I have no idea what it is, or if it’s anything at all, but I’m going to go hopping down that rabbit trail to find out.”
“You need to understand—when you in, you in,” Theresa told Jeff. “Once the cow’s been milked, there’s no squirting the cream back up the udder. If I’s you, I’d count the cost ’fore I decided to get on Chapman Whitworth’s bad side.”
“If what you say is true, that’s the only side he has.”
Jeff was the last person to leave Theresa’s house that night. He’d been the first to arrive, so his car in her driveway was blocked in by all the others. After kissing her lightly on the cheek and thanking her for her hospitality, he turned to go, but she caught him in mid-stride.
“You ever gone tell me what it is raises the hackles on Daniel’s neck anytime you’re around?”
He turned back, his face a mask she couldn’t read. “That day in my office, I told you there were some things I wasn’t willing to share—remember? That’s one of them.”
He started for the door again then paused and turned slowly back to face her again. “No…you’ll just ask Daniel. It’ll be harder for him to…” He stopped. Regrouped. Then looked full into her eyes and said it, flat out. “What Daniel Burke has against me is that I was having an affair with his wife before she di—before one of Chapman Whitworth’s henchmen butchered her.”
Theresa actually gasped. Full out loud. And her hand flew to her mouth. “Daniel’s Emily?” She saw on his face that her reaction upset him, but there was no hiding it.
“I loved her.” You could hear the anguish of loss in his voice and see it on his face. “It wasn’t just…I loved Emily Burke more than I’ve ever—”
He stopped abruptly, turned on his heel and walked with purpose out the door—not slamming it, but closing it firmly behind him.