Sometimes They Come Back Read online

  spoke two sentences.

  'It is a small boon. What do you offer?'

  Jim spoke two words.

  'Both,' the voice whispered. 'Right and left. Agreed?'

  'Yes.'

  'Then give me what is mine.

  He opened his pocketknife, turned to his desk, laid his right hand down flat,

  and hacked off his right index finger with four hard chops. Blood flew across

  the blotter in dark patterns. It didn't hurt at all. He brushed the finger aside

  and switched the pocketknife to his right hand. Cutting off the left finger was

  harder. His range hand felt awkward and alien with the missing finger, and the

  knife kept slipping. At last, with an impatient grunt, he threw the knife away,

  snapped the bone, and ripped the finger free. He picked them both up like

  breadsticks and threw them into the pentagram. There was a bright flash of

  light, like an old-fashioned photographer's flashpowder. No smoke, he noted. No

  smell of brimstone.

  'What objects have you brought?'

  'A photograph. A band of cloth that has been dipped in his sweat.'

  'Sweat is precious,' the voice remarked, and there was a cold greed in the tone

  that made Jim shiver. 'Give them to me.'

  Jim threw them into the pentagram. The light flashed.

  'It is good,' the voice said.

  'If they come,' Jim said.

  There was no response. The voice was gone - if it had ever been there. He leaned

  closer to the pentagram. The picture was still there, but blackened and charred.

  The sweatband was gone.

  In the street there was a noise, faint at first, then swelling. A hot rod

  equipped with glasspack mufflers, first turning on to Davis Street, then

  approaching. Jim sat down, listening to hear if it would go by or turn in.

  It turned in.

  Footfalls on the stairs, echoing.

  Robert Lawson's high-pitched giggle, then someone going 'Shhhhh!' and then

  Lawson's giggle again. The footfalls came closer, lost their echo, and then the

  glass door at the head of the stairs banged open.

  'Yoo-hoo, Normie!' David Garcia called, falsetto.

  'You there, Normie?' Lawson whispered, and then giggled. 'Vas you dere, C

  holly?'

  Vinnie didn't speak, but as they advanced up the hall, Jim could see their

  shadows. Vinnie's was the tallest, and he was holding a long object in one hand.

  There was a light snick of sound, and the long object became longer still.

  They were standing by the door, Vinnie in the middle. They were all holding

  knives.

  'Here we come, man,' Vinnie said softly. 'Here we come for your ass.'

  Jim turned on the record player.

  'Jesus!' Garcia called out, jumping. 'What's that?' The freight train was coming

  closer. You could almost feel the walls thrumming with it.

  The sound no longer seemed to be coming out of the speakers but from the hall,

  from down tracks someplace far away in time as well as space.

  'I don't like this, man,' Lawson said.

  'It's too late,' Vinnie said. He stepped forward and gestured with the knife.

  'Give us your money, dad.'

  ...letusgo...

  Garcia recoiled. 'What the hell -, But Vinnie never hesitated. He motioned the

  others to

  spread out, and the thing in his eyes might have been relief. 'Come on, kid, how

  much you got?' Garcia asked suddenly.

  'Four cents,' Jim said. It was true. He had picked them out of the penny jar in

  the bedroom. The most recent date was 1956.

  'You fuckin' liar.'

  .leave him alone...

  Lawson glanced over his shoulder and his eyes widened. The walls had become

  misty, insubstantial. The freight train wailed. The light from the parking-lot

  street-lamp had reddened, like the neon Burrets Building Company sign,

  stuttering against the twilight sky.

  Something was walking out of the pentagram, something with the face of a small

  boy perhaps twelve years old. A boy with a crew cut.

  Garcia darted forward and punched Jim in the mouth. He could smell mixed garlic

  and pepperoni on his breath. It was all slow and painless.

  Jim felt a sudden heaviness, like lead, in his groin, and his bladder let go. He

  looked down and saw a dark patch appear and spread on his pants.

  'Look, Vinnie, he wet himself!' Lawson cried out. The tone was right, but the

  expression on his face was one of horror - the expression of a puppet that has

  come to life only to find itself on strings.

  'Let him alone,' the Wayne-thing said, but it was not Wayne's voice - it was the

  cold, greedy voice of the thing from the pentagram. Run, Jimmy! Run! Run! Run!'

  Jim slipped to his knees and a hand slapped down on his back, groping for

  purchase, and found none.

  He looked up and saw Vinnie, his face stretching into a caricature of hatred,

  drive his knife into the Wayne-thing just below the breastbone . . . and then

  scream, his face collapsing in on itself, charring, blackening, becoming awful.

  Then he was gone.

  Garcia and Lawson struck a moment later, writhed, charred, and disappeared.

  Jim lay on the floor, breathing harshly. The sound of the freight train faded.

  His brother was looking down at him.

  'Wayne?' he breathed.

  And the face changed. It seemed to melt and run together. The eyes went yellow,

  and a horrible, grinning malignancy looked out at him.

  'I'll come back, Jim,' the cold voice whispered.

  And it was gone.

  He got up slowly and turned off the record player with one mangled hand. He

  touched his mouth. It was bleeding from Garcia's punch. He went over and turned

  on the lights. The room was empty. He looked out into the parking lot and that

  was empty, too, except for one hubcap that reflected the moon in idiot

  pantomime. The classroom air smelled old and stale - the atmosphere of tombs. He

  erased the pentagram on the floor and then began to straighten up the desks for

  the substitute the next day. His fingers hurt very badly - what fingers? He

  would have to see a doctor. He closed the door and went downstairs slowly,

  holding his hands to his chest. Halfway down, something -a shadow, or perhaps

  only an intuition - made him whirl around.

  Something unseen seemed to leap back.

  Jim remembered the warning in Raising Demons - the danger involved. You could

  perhaps summon them, perhaps cause them to do your work. You could even get rid

  of them.

  But sometimes they come back.

  He walked down the stairs again, wondering if the nightmare was over after all.