Free Tales from the Crypt - Demon Knight by Randall Boyll Page A

undies. Myself, I’m taking my typewriter to the cemetery to work on the plot.

6
    B rayker had seen it all before, too many times before, but the display of the Salesman’s power always hit him like a fresh punch to the gut. There were four of the newborn creatures beginning to caper and prance out there now as the Salesman dropped new blood on the ground. Lighting cut the night, and rain slashed across the earth as if the black sky was aware of this new confrontation and was trying to drown it.
    “Get back from the window,” Brayker shouted, shoving people aside. He dug his hand into the pouch and jerked the key out. “Back, dammit,” he commanded, pushing his way through. “Goddammit, Irene, move your green ass out of the way!”
    Lightning flashed again: one of the creatures already had its rubbery claws on the open window frame. With a clumsy leap it sprang into the room, lurched in a half-circle with its yellow eyes bulging, and jumped at Deputy Martel. Martel coughed out a short scream as it latched itself to his clothing like a large toad and wrenched its mouth open. With an animal grunt it tried to take a bite of his face, but Martel jerked backward.
    Brayker jammed the key into his pocket and darted to Sheriff Tupper’s fallen body. He bent and jerked Tupper’s pistol out of its holster, turned, and fired two quick shots.
    The creature’s eyes were the target. Parts of the back of its head blew outward in a spray of green and red liquid. With a high-pitched, pig-like squeal it dropped to the floor. Whitish fluid drizzled from its punctured eyeballs, causing shallow burns in the carpet where it dripped.
    Irene suddenly let out a whoop. Brayker spun, raising the pistol again. Another creature had leapt through the open window and hooked itself to her. She batted at it with her open hands, spinning in circles, shrieking. Brayker hesitated, then fired twice. The creature thumped greasily to the floor with its eyes shot out, twitched once, and was still.
    Someone began to giggle. Brayker snapped his head around. It was Jeryline. Her giggles became real laughter. She pressed both hands to the sides of her head, making her hair stand up in comical pony-tails, and lurched in a circle. “Don’t you see?” she shouted. “Don’t you see?”
    The other five, and Brayker, eyed her. Wally Enfield, almost awakened from his previous fainting spell, had fainted again.
    “They’re costumes!” she bellowed. “Fucking costumes!”
    She walked to the creature that had attacked Irene. Smoke drifted up from the stained, burned carpet where its blood had hit. Jeryline dropped to her knees and, with a grunt, rolled the thing over. She began to poke her fingers at the nape of its rubbery neck.
    “There’s a zipper here someplace,” she said. Her hair hung across her eyes in damp strings; her eyes themselves were overly bright. Brayker had seen this reaction before, and not just in women. Ignoring her, he jogged to the open window, pulling the key out of his pocket as he moved. He stopped and twisted the glass orb on its mounting, exposing a small hole. When he upended the key a single drop of the dark liquid fell on the window sill.
    “Well, I’ll be hanged,” Uncle Willie breathed wonderingly.
    The single drop had instantly begun to sizzle. Two horizontal lines of yellowish flame shot from it, spread to the sides and zipped upward as fast as a pair of slot cars on an easy track, then met again at the top. Poof, and the flame was out.
    Brayker turned. “This window is sealed now. None of the demons, not even the Salesman, can pass through it.”
    Roach rattled his head as if clearing it of cobwebs. “Hold on here now,” he said. “They ain’t no such things as demons.”
    Brayker offered him a bitter sneer. “Are you going to look for zippers now too? Or just shut your eyes and pretend nothing happened?”
    Cordelia put a hand against Roach’s chest. “Listen to me,” she said, her eyes moving back and forth