Demon Town, page 22
“Hello?”
“H-hi Lisa?”
“Yes?”
“Hi Lisa. It’s Mac calling. I’m finally calling you.” Mac shook his head. ‘Like she didn’t figure that one out, dumb ass.’ he thought to himself.
“Hi Mac, thanks for calling.”
“Is everything okay?” ‘That’s better. Let her do the talking.’
There was a hesitation on the other end of the phone line.
“Lisa?”
“Sorry, I’m just wondering if this is such a good idea. I don’t want to drag you into my problems.”
“It’s okay. Drag away, Lisa. I owe you big time. If you have a problem, I’ll do my best to help you out.”
There was another pause on the other end of the line. For a moment Mac thought that he might have lost the telephone connection with Lisa.
“It’s Kyle.” she finally blurted out.
‘Of course it is.’ Mac thought. ‘Let me guess- you finally realized what an ‘A-hole’ the guy is and need to make a clean break from him and find someone more Mac like.’ “Did he do something to you?”
“Not to me, no.” Lisa hesitated once more. “I think that he may be in trouble.”
‘That would be a shame if Kyle was locked up far away leaving Lisa alone with me waiting in the wings to swoop in and save the day.’ Mac imagined himself comforting for Lisa in her time of need. “What kind of trouble?”
“Do you know the Olson brothers? Dennis and Brian?”
“Yeah, Dawg and Bear.” Mac suddenly didn’t like where this conversation was headed.
“I think they’re nothing but bad news, but...but I think that Kyle is somehow involved with them. I’m so stupid...I think he has been for a while.”
“What do you mean?” Mac looked over both shoulders to make sure that his parents weren’t listening in on his telephone conversation.
“I went over to Kyle’s place last Thursday. He didn’t know that I was coming over. When I drove around the corner, I saw that silver truck that they drive parked in his driveway. I pulled over on the street... I couldn’t figure out why they were there. They just sat in the truck as it idled and Kyle was standing talking to them and then...” Lisa started to cry and slowly trailed off. After a few seconds, she cleared her throat and recomposed herself. “Sorry, I’m not sure about this part, but it looked like he reached into his coat and handed them an envelope and then they gave him a backpack or some kind of bag.”
“Drugs.” Mac whispered more to himself, but Lisa heard what he said.
“That’s what I’m thinking. The Olson’s left right after that and I waited for another five minutes before I went to see Kyle.”
“Did you see the backpack at his place?”
“No, I did a quick search for it when he was in the shower, but couldn’t find anything.”
Mac had some unpleasant images of Lisa being with Kyle at his place and suddenly wanted to punch something. “Do you think he’s selling drugs?” he asked her, but was already convinced that Kyle was. It only made sense.
“I don’t know.” Lisa answered. “I knew that he made decent money working in the oilfield, but...and then seeing him with the Olson’s and all the rumors going around town about them right now...” Lisa started to cry once more.
Mac wanted to tell her what he knew about the Olson brothers and the demons and everything that was going on, but stopped himself. He had no way to prove anything. Besides, if he did tell Lisa what he knew about Dawg and Bear and she accidentally mentioned something to Kyle, who knows what they would do to her? No, it’s better to keep her in the dark for now for her own safety.
“Are you okay, Lisa? Do you want some...company?”
“Thanks Mac, but I’ve probably taken up enough of your time already. I think that I just needed someone to talk to about this. Hopefully, I’m just imagining things.” Lisa stopped herself. “Okay, I know that I’m not imagining things. I know what I saw and I know what I saw him with. I’m just...scared.”
“I can believe it. Listen Lisa, if there’s anything-”
“Somebody just pulled up.” Lisa cut Mac off. “I think it’s him. I have to go. Thanks for listening, Mac. I’ll talk to you soon.”
Lisa hung up and Mac wondered if he should drive into town to her place and make sure that she was okay. He thought about it for a moment and then felt that he might be overreacting. The 3M’s always kind of suspected that Kyle must be selling drugs on the side. They’d never seen him doing it, but Milo knew someone who knew a guy who knew another guy that said Kyle was the guy to see if he needed a little something something to get you through the day. Mac didn’t think that Kyle would hurt Lisa, though. He was harmless, kind of like one of those surfer dudes that was high on life and maybe a little something else. The Olson brothers however, were different story. Hopefully, Kyle didn’t cross them somehow causing them to use Lisa to extract some kind of payback.
Mac replayed their conversation over in his mind. He tried not to get too far ahead of himself, but he wondered where this was going. Yes, Lisa had a boyfriend, but she gave Mac her phone number and asked him to call her. She confided in Mac about a troubling matter and told him that she was scared. Did Lisa have feelings for him after their visit to the hospital? Then, there was the kiss. She kissed him. Mac caught his reflection in the mirror and realized that he was gushing like a schoolgirl who just had her first dance at the school sock hop.
“Get a grip, man!” he mumbled and then grinned at his reflection in the mirror. Maybe he would give Lisa a call tomorrow to make sure that she was okay.
With the rumors circulating around Paradise Flats at a fevered pitch, the demons proceeded with their damage control plan. They wanted the attention diverted as far away from themselves as quickly as possible. The Paradise Flats Review’s latest edition came out with a scathing editorial from publisher Brian Jamison. He belittled the gossip mongers for slandering the names of certain individuals in the town’s business community. Jamison questioned the integrity of those spreading the rumors and innuendo’s based on idle gossip and not cold hard facts. No proof had come forth supporting these rumors and unless someone had evidence to the contrary, he wanted them and the accusations to stop immediately. To further prove his point, Jamison was personally offering a $1000 reward to anyone who would come forth with information that would lead to the person or persons that started these malicious fabrications.
There was also an in-depth interview with Paradise Flats’ chief of police, Charlie Russell on the matter on page two. He was quite adamant that the rumors were strictly hearsay and that there was no evidence suggesting otherwise. There was no mention of the names of those people at the center of the controversy, but the chief stressed that the gossip was unfounded and that they were damaging the good reputations of those people and their families. He went on to further state that while there is no law against small town gossip, slandering someone’s good name is a crime and anyone found doing so can and will be punished in the court of law.
Jonathon Neale was pleased with the newspaper write ups and felt that Brian Jamison had done a good job putting it all together. Hopefully, this would silence the gossip mongers. He didn’t really care about how it affected his reputation in Paradise Flats. The rumors would die down eventually, they always did. There was always something else that would happen that the humans would feed on for their personal amusement at the expense of someone else’s suffering. It was just in their nature. He had witnessed it for hundreds of years now. It was why they were so easy to deceive and manipulate and why he had needed a change after all of these years.
He was the one who originally stumbled across Paradise Flats two years ago. Eternal damnation had taken its toll on him. Jonathon had witnessed countless acts of suffering and treachery in his time and had probably inflicted twice that number himself. He despised the humans and like his brothers wanted them wiped off the face of the earth forever. Yet, for all the pain and misery that they had brought forward onto the humans, they still continued to thrive and multiply. There were many of his kind who were convinced that they were close to upsetting the balance between good and evil and that very soon evil would run rampant and mankind would turn on itself and destroy humanity.
Jonathon had heard this for centuries now and had become convinced that they were never going to upset the balance. Try as they might to corrupt mankind, the humans were like a virus that had spread out of control. He had witnessed countless acts of atrocity and seen the humans at their worst, but the demons would always find themselves no further ahead in their grand scheme. Even when the demons managed to turn mankind against itself in not only one world war, but two, the humans found their resolve once more and Jonathon found himself beginning to lose all hope that their plan would ever succeed. There was something in the human’s nature that rallied them when it appeared that all hope was lost. Perhaps one day the demons would gain the upper hand and decimate the entire human race, but for now Jonathon Neale needed a change.
He had no name in the netherworld. Names were not required for the task at hand, you were simply required to corrupt the damned souls or suffer the consequences. This was a world of cold and darkness, of suffering and pain. Evil abounded there and few could be trusted. On his many visits to the human world, he found many of the humans not much different than his own kind. They were easy to subvert, however there were many of those who couldn’t be corrupted and the human’s numbers simply kept growing and growing, making their task that much more difficult.
There were the angels to always be on the lookout for, as well. Even though it was in their code not to interfere with the events that take place in the human world, there were those among them who still protected the humans. Jonathon had learned from experience that the presence of an angel usually resulted in disaster for the demons. How many years had it been now? Eternally damned and always on the hunt for the weak and susceptible humans while always in turn being hunted by the angels sent from above. It was a never ending circle for Jonathon that had played itself out over and over through countless years; one that he had become weary of.
Discovering Paradise Flats when he did was a stroke of pure luck. Jonathon was on his way to a larger center when the vehicle that he was riding in broke down outside of the sleepy little town. There was something about the peaceful serenity of the place and its remoteness that appealed to the demon. There wasn’t the hustle and bustle of the cities where the sheer number of humans overwhelmed it. There were no rogue angels hunting here constantly. The more time that the demon spent in Paradise Flats, the more that he liked the idea of setting up shop here. The human lawyer was ruthless and easily manipulated. After the demon discarded the human form that it had possessed upon his arrival in the little town, it took control of Jonathon Neale and assumed his body, identity and memories. He was by no means retiring from his mission of destroying mankind, but merely stepping away from it temporarily. The lawyer lived a comfortable life and the demon grew to appreciate it. In time, more of his brethren joined him there, just a few of those that he knew that he could trust...if that was possible with demons.
They kept low profiles considering that they possessed the minds and bodies of the upper elite in Paradise Flats. Everything that they did was carefully planned and they could have been more enterprising if they had so desired, but they didn’t want to do too much for now in case they drew too much attention to themselves and alerted the angels to their presence. The drug trafficking was ambitious enough to start with and more than profitable enough for them to still fulfil their demonic duties and enjoy their leisurely lifestyles. For as much as the demons abhorred the humans, they found themselves adapting to their ways rather easily. It also helped having the Olson brothers and their associates on the demons payroll. Let them do all of the dirty work while the demons did all the planning. It was a match made in...hell.
Jonathon saw the potential in the brothers almost immediately after assuming the lawyer’s identity. After defending them twice and having their charges reduced to basically house arrest, he approached them with a proposition. He was surprised by their subdued reaction when he and his brothers revealed their true identities.
“We kinda knew we were always headed that way since we were kids.” Dawg deadpanned to the demons. “Only makes sense that you would discover our talents and put our services to good use.”
With a little direction, the pair proved to be quite resourceful. The demons found that their passion for violence and destruction rivaled their own and left them shaking their heads on more than one occasion. They found it ironic that their little band of demons had to keep the two human brothers in check at times. Still, if that was their biggest concern, they would gladly live with it.
Right now, what troubled Jonathon Neale the most was who started the drug trafficking rumors in the first place. He knew the gossip was just part of the norm in a small town like Paradise Flats. This particular rumor bothered him, though. It was no coincidence that the seven businessmen named were singled out among the others in the town’s business community. Someone knew too much...even Jonathon was worried that their secret had been compromised. Only a select few like the Olson brothers knew what they truly were and he was certain that they wouldn’t reveal their identities. Who would believe them anyway?
Somebody in Paradise Flats knew more than they were letting on, however and that made them dangerous. Jonathon wondered why Charlie Russell wasn’t named along with himself and the others, but maybe that was because he was a new addition to their ranks. Nevertheless, the gossip needed to be stopped. The newspaper editorial and the interview with the chief of police would help, but Jonathon felt that the reward would prove to be the ace up their sleeve that they were looking for. He knew the human’s penchant for greed and felt that they would sell out their best friend or family member if the price was right. If and when the time came that the person or persons who started the rumors were found out, the demons would have to determine what exactly they knew and how much of a threat they were to their plans. It was something that they would normally let the Olson brothers handle, but if their identities and plans were about to be compromised, Jonathon wanted to be there in person to deal with this matter and he would make sure that it did not end well for the individuals involved.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
If the stories circulating around Paradise Flats about the alleged drug trafficking deterred the demons, they did nothing to slow down Dawg and Bear. For them it was business as usual; their product needed to reach their distributors in order to keep their customers happy. Dawg didn’t require a sophisticated business plan in order to make sure that the quota was met each month. The gossip in town didn’t bother him or Bear one iota.
The demons talked about backing off from moving their product until things settled down again, but Dawg saw no reason for it. The police were basically in the demons’ back pocket, so they wouldn’t be a problem. Narcs hadn’t been an issue before and Dawg couldn’t see them showing up now because of some coffee shop gossip. If the truth be known, the brothers liked watching the demons squirm. They had been lurking around in the background calling all the shots and keeping their hands clean while the brothers took care of all the unpleasant deeds. Sure, they had the connections and that whole demon shit happening, but it was good to see them on the hot seat for once.
The only thing that troubled them was the matter of who was out at the barn that day with Dawg. Bear swore over and over that it wasn’t him, but Dawg thought that maybe his little brother had been sampling some of the merchandise and didn’t want to admit that he had some hallucinations happening. Sid Williams had some suspicions of his own, but didn’t bother to share them with the two brothers. Dawg heard Sid talking on the phone and mentioned something about angels or perhaps some other demons posing as humans and to be on the lookout. Whatever the case, the demons were sitting on pins and needles with the whole situation. Dawg played it safe after the incident and moved the drugs to a different location back on their family farm with their two German Shepherd dogs to keep an eye on things. Nothing had been disturbed when they got back to the old Sharp place that day, but as Dawg thought about the events that had transpired, it crossed his mind that the Turbo gas station was where things got strange. He wondered if those three bozos there had something to do with what went down, but when he thought it over some more he didn’t think those dumbasses were capable of pulling off something like this.
That had been a couple of weeks ago now and nothing out of the ordinary had happened in that time, but the demons were still gun shy about doing anything with all the gossip going around. Dawg thought that everything had been blown out of proportion, but he kept his mouth shut. It was a quiet evening on the farm and he and Bear were hunkered down in the living room drinking beer and watching Magnum PI when the phone rang. Dawg answered it after the sixth ring when Bear made no attempt to pick up the receiver beside him.
“Yeah?”
“Dawg? Hey, it’s Kyle here.”
“Yeah?”
“We got a bit of a situation here at Quincy’s. There’s a couple of guys here that I’ve never seen before...they look like bikers, I think. Anyhow, they’re kind of nosing around looking to score some weed and asking a bunch of different questions.”
“Like what?” Dawg was trying to pay attention to the TV screen, but was missing what the conversation was between Magnum and Higgins. “What did they say?” he asked Bear.
“What did who say?” Kyle asked.
“Not you...never mind. What kind of questions are they asking?”
