The 11th Demon

Chapter 11

Josh Knight

I had just finished playing BioShimmer IV for the third time when I heard the alarm go off. Jonathan and Uncle Cephas wanted me to put a receiver for the alarm in the kitchen, but I made sure I had it tied to my laptop. So, just when the bad dude was telling his tale of betrayal and all that at the end of the game, the little red light popped up in the middle of my screen. The teleporter had returned!
I bolted down to the kitchen and Uncle Cephas and Jonathan were already heading for the stairs down to the basement. I was ready to go down the stairs in stealth mode but Jonathan rushed down there, flipping on light switches. Man, where was his head at? I passed Uncle Cephas as he hobbled down the stairs and beat Jonathan to the desk. He held out his arm and when I ran into it, it was like falling on a handrail off my skateboard.
“Hey, what’d you do that for?”
Jonathan clamped a hand over my mouth and I jerked away. “Stop it!” I hissed.
“Would you be quiet?”
“Why?” I whispered. “Dude, you’ve already turned on all the lights. I think we’ve lost the element of surprise!”
Jonathan was looking around the basement. “Where’s Theo?”
I saw the Taser gun on the other side of the desk. “Jonathan, we may have a problem.” I picked up the Taser gun. “Theo saw someone.”
“Or, something.” Uncle Cephas said. He was leaning over the desk. “The chest is gone. But, not to worry, I have the original information on my computer.”
Theo’s cot was empty. The computer desk was also empty. “Ah, we have another problem.”
Jonathan leaned over the empty desk and pounded it with his fist. “Your computer is gone.”
Uncle Cephas stood there blank faced. “I know I should have backed up the data on an extra hard drive.”
I looked down at the cot. “So, where’s Theo?”
“Satan, you fiend! Get out of here!” I had never seen Uncle Cephas so angry. His face turned red and he clenched his fists.
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Calm down, Uncle Cephas. You don’t want to stroke out.”
“I am so tired of this!” His voice was hoarse with anger. He glared at me with red-rimmed eyes. His bushy hair was in disarray and I noticed for the first time he was wearing flannel pajamas covered with tiny red robots. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry.
“I fight them and I fight them. They hurt us and they kill us. They take away everything we love! I hate them! I hate them!” He screamed and collapsed onto the concrete floor. I looked at Jonathan and his face paled. We both helped him up from the floor. I grabbed the desk chair and placed it under him.
“Cephas,” Jonathan said. “Calm down. This is exactly what the enemy wants us to do. We can’t lose hope.”
Uncle Cephas rubbed his face and was mumbling something. It sounded like a name. Molly? Who was Molly? He looked up and his eyes were wild.
“Man, don’t get wiggy on us.” I said.
“Wiggy?”
I wiggled my finger in a spiral motion at my temple. “You know, ditzy, looney, gaga.”
“I am not going gaga or ditzy or wiggy. I’m frustrated, young man.”
Jonathan sighed and leaned on the edge of the desk. “Theo must have zapped the intruder. But, then what?”
I snapped my finger. “Wait! The camera!”
“What camera?” Uncle Cephas asked.
“I hooked up my old iSight on one of your computers to stream video to my laptop. Wait right here.” I ran up the stairs and into my room. I lifted my MacBook Pro and ran back down to the basement. I plopped down at the desk and pulled up the video file. “I didn’t tell you guys but I wanted to check out this cool video monitoring program I downloaded. I wasn’t sure it would work.” I played with the keys on the keyboard and another thought surfaced. This would make Uncle Cephas’ day. “Oh, I backed up your data files from down here onto my hard drive. Just as a precaution.”
Uncle Cephas’ eyes filled with moisture and he placed a hand on my shoulder. “My son, I have underestimated you. Again.”
For a second my heart skipped. I had never known Uncle Cephas that well. He was always the strange mad scientist dude. My mom and dad always had good things to say about him. Mom and Dad. For a second, the wave of sorrow came over me. I wanted to wallow in the feeling of loss and despair. It felt good sometimes. But, the video that appeared on my laptop drew my attention elsewhere. I looked at the time code at the bottom of the file and moved the scrub bar to about ten minutes before the alarm went off. I could feel Jonathan hovering over me and smelled Uncle Cephas’ Old Spice.
“Nice pajamas, Unc.” I said.
“We must, sometimes, reconnect with that which reminds us that we are still young at heart. I speak, of course, of those of my generation. I had a pair of pajamas like these as a child.”
I stopped the scrub bar movement and pressed the play button. “Here we go. Ten minutes ago.”
The image was very dark and I had positioned the security camera on one of the crates. We watched the images unfolding. There was a tiny flash of light and suddenly a man stood in the center of the room. The camera was directed from the back corner toward the desk. The man hurried to the desk and grabbed the chest. Something huge obscured the camera view and when it cleared, Theo fired his Taser and the flash of electricity lit up the man’s face. It was vague and unfocused but clearly a man. He fell and Theo rushed across the room. As Theo bent over the man he suddenly flipped backwards and landed on his feet with the two halves of the chest still hugged against his jacket. Theo grabbed the man in a bear hug. There was another flash of light and they disappeared.
“He took Theo with him.” Steel said.
We watched and two minutes later, the man appeared again. He walked toward the computer desk and the camera was only about two feet from his side. He reached out and grabbed the main CPU and there was another flash of light. The camera went to static.
“Lost the signal.” I said.
Jonathan was pale and his gaze went far away. “He took Theo. And, the computer. It was all too easy.”
Uncle Cephas sat down in the other desk chair at his desk. “How can we stop someone like that?”
“We have to protect this house.” Jonathan began pacing. I watched the arteries pulse in the dude’s temples. His face grew red.
“Uh, oh. Here it comes!” I mumbled.
Jonathan grabbed an empty wooden crate and hurled it across the room. It struck the back wall of the basement and Styrofoam peanuts filled the air along with splintered wood. “I am sick of this! Why can’t you give us one break?” He glared up at the ceiling. “Just one freakin’ break? But, no, you keep letting them come at us over and over.”
“Hey, Jonathan.” I said. My voice was shaky. “Calm down, dude.”
Jonathan’s fist were clinched and he was breathing hard and fast. “Looks like its up to us. No help from above. We have to do something or they’ll keep coming and coming.” He glanced around the room and his eyes came to rest on the box on the desk. I noticed the picture frame for the first time and the box of Uncle Cephas’ stuff. “Cephas, how did you protect your building?”
Uncle Cephas swallowed hard. “I never worried about it. Frankly, I didn’t attract that much attention after I moved in.”
“Until I came along.” Jonathan said. “Can we bind up the demons or something? Come on, old man. You’re the expert here.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Bind up demons? Dude, with what? Hell tape?”