Her Favorite Demon
by Bill Prindle
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
part 1
On the last day of school, Miss Preble regarded the eighth-graders of Dark Haven’s junior high as they sat fidgeting at their desks. She told them to take out a sheet of paper and write a letter to themselves, using the proper friendly letter format, describing their hopes and goals for the coming summer.
When Kat Bowden asked why they couldn’t just send a text or an email to themselves, Miss Preble held up her right hand, instantly stilling all protests. She explained the value of knowing how to write a proper letter and, because of their rarity, the pleasing reaction such letters would produce.
She instructed them on how to fold the letter correctly and insert it into their self-addressed envelopes. While they labored over their work, Miss Preble observed the slender, freckled girl with the strawberry blond braid that curled around her shoulder.
Lili Taylor, her most earnest, ambitious student, who always sat in the front row, who was always the first to raise her hand, who wrote and spoke with an uncanny mixture of innocence and maturity, had but one friend because of her impatience with her classmates.
Why Lili and Kat were friends was a mystery to Miss Preble. Both were smart, both were poor, but Kat was a little schemer of the type Miss Preble had seen before. People like Kat always found their way in the world, but Miss Preble worried that Lili’s ambitions, lofty as they were, might lead her to terrible disappointments.
When they finished, Miss Preble collected the letters and told the class she would mail the letters to them at the end of summer so that they could see how far they had advanced in achieving their dreams.
Lili Taylor had known exactly what to write:
Dear Lili,
You will win the Benson School Scholarship, and you will embark on your exciting new life!
Your friend,
Lili Taylor
P.S. For research purposes only, you will kiss a boy.
* * *
“Lili! Get down here!” Aunt Edith bellowed up the staircase. “I gotta get to work!” She dropped a Pop Tart into the toaster, gulped down her cup of instant coffee, and lit a cigarette.
Lili Taylor had already been awake for an hour so she could continue reading Dark Fury, the sixth novel in the series about Séraphine Flambeau, the twenty-year old Parisian orphan, psychic, musician, model, and detective. Séraphine was beautiful but unimpressed by her beauty, brilliantly intellectual but modest about her gifts, fiercely loyal to her friends and foolishly underestimated by her enemies, ardently desired by men and women but unattached by choice, and utterly adored by Lili Taylor.
In Dark Fury, Séraphine was on the trail of master criminal Monsieur Zed, possibly from another dimension, who had stolen the Mona Lisa from the Louvre Museum. He was also implicated in her parents’ deaths, which had occurred in Bar Sinister, book two of the series.
More than anything, Lili yearned to escape Aunt Edith and the small town parochial confines of Dark Haven, Maine, move to Paris, and become best friends with someone like Séraphine.
Two months earlier, Lili had discovered the first book in the series in a second-hand bookstore in Ellsworth and, three days later, used her hard-earned money to purchase all fifteen volumes of Séraphine’s adventures, written by the enigmatically-named author L.C.R.
Sighing, “À bientôt, Séraphine,” Lili closed the book, hid it under her pillow, pulled on her cut-off jean shorts and slipped into a shapeless T-shirt, and went downstairs. She knew from the tone of Edith’s yowl she was already in a bad mood and would probably return home drunk that night.
“Jesus H. Christ, Lili, you look like something the cat dragged in,” Edith said as Lili slunk into the kitchen. “Why don’t you wear those new clothes I bought you?”
“Because they’re ugly,” Lili said.
“I’ll have you know that I bought them at the consignment store in Bangor. Those clothes come from rich folks, and you’d look one hell of a lot better if you put ’em on. You’d be pretty, if you half tried.”
“Nice of you to say so, Edith.”
“Why can’t you just call me ‘Ma’ like a normal kid?”
“Because you’re not my mother.” Lili took a sip of her orange juice and pushed away the plate with the Pop Tart.
“Well, Miss Persnickity,” said Edith, taking a last, long drag on her cigarette and dropping the butt into the sink, “I’m as close to a mother as you’ll ever get, so be grateful. And eat that Pop Tart. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. You’ll never fill out if you don’t eat more. A fourteen-year-old like you should have a decent pair of tits by now. I sure as hell did.”
Lili blushed scarlet. As much as she tried not to care about what Edith said, her aunt still had the power to humiliate her. Pleased she had landed a blow in their ongoing war, Edith smirked, picked up her purse, and paused at the door.
“And don’t spend the day reading those damned books. Clean up the kitchen, do the laundry, dust my Hummels, and have dinner on the table when I come home at seven.”
“Yes, Edith,” Lili said, poking the Pop Tart with a fork.
Edith took a long look at Lili, let out an exasperated gasp, and slammed the door behind her.
“Well, Jesus H. Christ, Edith, I thought you’d never leave,” said Lili brightly as she forked the Pop Tart into the garbage. She took two eggs and some American cheese slices out of the fridge, heated up a pan, cooked what she hoped was an omelette such as Séraphine might make, made herself a cup of instant coffee with scalded milk, sat down at the table, and ate.
“Ah, Lili, that was une omelette fantastique ! Why thank you, Séraphine!” Lili said as she washed the dishes. She tidied the kitchen and mopped the floor. From the pantry, she took out a large can of Dinty Moore beef stew and plopped it on the counter. “
“Le dîner est servi, Madame Edith !” she announced. “Would you prefer a plate or will you eat it straight out of the can tonight?”
After gathering up the dirty laundry and tossing it into the washer, Lili took a soft cloth from the pantry and went to the living room to dust Edith’s collection of Hummel figurines. Lili carefully removed each porcelain figure, cleaned it, and replaced it precisely where it had been.
She knew Edith would check them and raise hell if even one was out of place. As silly as the cherubic children looked, they awakened an aching in Lili’s heart for such a simple, happy childhood. One of them was of a little girl, waving goodbye, a suitcase at her feet. It was entitled, “Off On A New Adventure.”
Someday, Lili thought, that will be me.
When she finished, she retrieved her notebook from under her mattress and sat down at the kitchen table to make her daily list. Lily loved being organized. She wrote:
1. X.
2. Go to library. Study vocabulary. Consult with Helen.
3. Find Kat.
4. Check mail!!!
5. Job at Variety.
6. Come home.
7. Read.
8. Feed dragon (Edith).
9. Read, study, learn.
10. Sleep.
The X on her list was code for a young man named Alonzo Wardwell, one of the workers demolishing the crumbling ell that connected their house to the barn. The house was part of a modest trust created by Lili’s grandfather, who took Lili in as an infant when her parents died. Administered by a lawyer in Ellsworth, the trust generated just enough interest to maintain the house and pay the real estate taxes and not much more.
When Lili turned five, her grandfather had died, and his elder daughter Edith became Lili’s guardian but couldn’t lay a finger on the money in the trust, a fact that drove Edith nuts. When Lili turned twenty-one, the house went to Edith and whatever remained of the trust to Lili.
Until then, Edith and Lili had to get by on whatever money they made and such scholarships Lili might win that would launch her on an Edith-free life of learning and adventure, anywhere but Dark Haven.
Lili went outside and ambled over to watch the workers. Lon was Kat’s boyfriend and Kat was Lili’s best friend, so Lili didn’t want to appear too eager even though she enjoyed looking at him. With her hands behind her back, she approached Lon as he pried off clapboards and piled them up.
“Hi there, Lonnie,” she said.
Lon was a sinuous eighteen-year old dropout with bedroom eyes, dark lank hair, and a chipped front tooth he’d gotten in a fight. He’d mastered the skill of smoking an entire cigarette without taking it out of the corner of his mouth and radiated a budding delinquent’s aura of cool self-assurance.
Many of the girls in Dark Haven had a crush on him, and a few summering wives, awaiting the late August arrival of their husbands, had given him the once over and liked what they saw. Kat had told Lili that Lon was teaching her to drive his pickup and, at the end of each lesson, they’d park on the shore road. She’d confided that Lon was an excellent kisser, and that so far she had managed to restrain his wandering hands.
“’Lo, Lilikins,” he said looking over his shoulder. He’d taken off his shirt, and Lili watched his lanky frame in fascination, his taut muscles flexing under his sweaty, dirty skin.
“Don’t call me Lilikins. I’m almost fifteen!” she protested.
He turned around and gave her a long, appraising look. With her auburn hair in a long braid, freckles across the bridge of her nose, dark blue eyes, and willowy body, his expert gaze saw both the awkward girl and the emerging young woman.
“Come here,” he said. “Got something to show ya.”
They climbed over a pile of clapboards.
“Watch out for the nails,” he said.
He held out his hand, and her heart flip-flopped when she took it. It was dirty, hard with calluses, and warm. They sat down on an exposed footer, and he picked up a small book. “Found this inside the wall. Musta been put in there a long time ago.”
He turned it over in his hands. The back cover was missing. As he thumbed the brittle pages, she saw that all the text was handwritten, like a diary.
“Let me see it!” she said.
“Not so fast. Your mom said we get to keep all the lumber from the ell. I reckon this book is part of the ell, so it’s mine.”
“She’s not my mom. Come on, Lon, you don’t want it.”
“Maybe I do and maybe I don’t. Depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“Depends on what you give me for it.”
Lili ran through a quick inventory of what she might be able to give him and couldn’t think of a thing. “What do you want ?”
“Reckon I’d take a kiss.”
“A kiss? From me?” Lily blushed.
“Yup.”
She leaned over, planted a light peck on his cheek, and held out her hand. “Now give it to me.”
“T’were’t much of a kiss,” he said rubbing his cheek.
She leaned in to kiss his cheek again, but he quickly turned to face her, held her chin, and smooshed his lips against hers. When his tongue wriggled into her mouth, she tried to pull away, but he held her firmly for a few seconds before he let go. She rubbed the back of her hand across her mouth.
“Yech!” she said grimacing. It was her first kiss.
Lon laughed and handed her the book. “How’d you like it?”
“It was disgusting!” she said, but in fact, she had felt the very same tingle when she’d read the account of Séraphine and her best friend Rémy losing their virginity together in book four, Adieu à l’amour.
“That’ll change soon enough,” he said and loped off.
Lili rushed upstairs to her room, slipped the dusty little book and her notebook into her knapsack, and rode her bike down the shady, elm-lined streets to Dark Haven’s small library.
“Well, Lili Taylor,” said Helen Littlefield from behind the mahogany circulation desk, “how are you on this fine morning?”
Helen had been the librarian for as long as most people in town could remember. Now in her seventies and stooped with age, with straight white hair, lively alert eyes, and her blue cardigan sweater, she was Lili’s favorite person in town.
Lili leaned across the counter and kissed Helen’s cheek. Helen handed her five sheets of paper, upon which were vocabulary words, small research projects, and a reading list she had assembled to satisfy Lili’s voracious desire to learn everything the library offered.
Helen was so taken with Lili’s intelligence and dedication that she had given Lili a key to the library, which was strictly against library policy, but so great were Helen’s hopes for Lili, that there was little she wouldn’t do to aid Lili’s quest for knowledge and her desire to escape Dark Haven.
Lili looked over the vocabulary words and nodded with satisfaction. She was familiar with some of the words but lacked the knowledge to use them precisely.
“Have you heard anything about the Benson Scholarship?” Helen asked.
“The letter might come today,” Lili said.
Even though she had the best academic record and was the most diligent and conscientious student of her eighth grade class, Lili was still nervous. The full, four-year scholarship allowed a rising ninth grader from Dark Haven to attend the private Benson School in Prescott, one town over.
If she didn’t get the scholarship, she couldn’t afford Benson and would have to attend the dismal regional high school. If that happened, she was certain that her chances of getting into a good college would be gone, and her dreams of sophistication, world travel, intrigue, and perhaps romance would remain just that: dreams. She was certain that everything — her entire future — depended on that scholarship. She was one of three who had applied, among them her friend Kat.
She climbed the circular staircase to what she called her aerie, a desk secluded in the bookshelves next to a computer terminal and with a view down LaTour Street to the blue waters of Slocum Bay.
Using the dictionary Helen had given her — Helen convinced her that definitions stuck better if she looked them up in a book and not online — Lili first looked up the new vocabulary words she didn’t know: accede, destitute, inopportune, melancholy, ominous, quandary, solace, and venal.
But after twenty minutes, her curiosity got the better of her, and she put aside her studies to examine the book Lon had found. It was dusty, and the pages were worm-eaten, the edges lacey with rot.
The cover looked like some kind of hide or leather. The first page was in a graceful script and read, Incantatorum and below that Vires Intus. The text had been elegantly handwritten in French. The back cover and some back pages were missing.
With her two years of French, Lili thought she might be able to translate it, so she logged onto the computer and got to work. After two hours, she had translated the first eighteen pages and the Latin title: “Spells, The Force Within.”
The little book had only twenty leaves — forty pages. She determined it had been transcribed by someone named Augustine Naquin from other books called grimoires, which she learned were books of spells and magic that dated as far back as the Dark Ages.
How did it get in my house? she wondered.
Copyright © 2021 by Bill Prindle
