MicroHorror

I think it was Mark Twain who said San Francisco was a natural home for ghosts, with the fog and all. He was sorta right about that. When I arrived the city was blanketed with the thickest fog I have ever encountered. Maybe this demon knew I was coming. But I had no choice. Delphi (on high) had given me the call. Simple as that.

I took a room in an old North Beach hotel and waited. I knew I wouldn’t have to wait long. In my line of work, the client comes to you, one way or the other.

The phone rang and woke me up. I mumbled “Hello, this is Cassidy,” and heard an unholy voice rasp “Come find me, dickhead,” before the line went dead.

Game on, I guess. I checked my equipment and went out into the pea-soup fog. It was wet and cold, a typical San Francisco day in October.

I didn’t know what this hellspawn looked like, but it sounded like a he. I imagined he would know me by sight. Or he would if I didn’t have a little pouch of “glamour dust” to give me an advantage.

I walked down through North Beach’s Italian section, passing the few people who ventured out in this fog, but after all, they lived here so were used to it. I could feel the demon was close, but all of these people were fellow humans, blissfully unaware of what was hiding among them.

The vibes got stronger as I reached Broadway and Chinatown. The demon was here somewhere, but what form had he taken to blend in with humanity?

Something drew me into the City Lights Bookstore, at the corner of Broadway and Columbus Avenue. Yeah, he was in here, somewhere. Not that big a store, but crowded at this hour of the day as a good escape from the chilly fog. No one stood out to me, but I could sense his presence. Carefully I checked out everyone in the bookstore, as I pretended to be browsing.

Something about this one guy drew my attention though. He looked… familiar, like I should recognize him. On a whim, I went upstairs and found a book that could help me. On the Road by Jack Kerouac. The dust jacket had a photo of the author. The same guy whom I saw downstairs. Jack Kerouac. This demon just made his big mistake, choosing the form of someone dead for 40 years, and well known enough to stand out like a sore thumb to anyone who studies modern literature. Like me.

“Jack” was leaving the bookstore when I came downstairs. He was probably overdue for his fix. I followed him out into the fog and down the street, until he ducked quickly into a narrow Chinatown alley.

The fog had settled in the alley, but I heard a muffled cry coming from deep within it. Rushing forward, I saw the demon had dropped his Kerouac appearance and stood as his hideous self, holding a frightened Chinese woman aloft, preparing to bite her head off and drink the blood he needed to remain on this earthly plane.

He looked me up and down, laughing like a thunderclap. “So, little girl, maybe I do you after I snack on this old hag?” he growled.

I guess the “glamour dust” make me appear as a young, attractive girl to him. Well, this “little girl” had a big gun in her “dress.” I pulled my Azrael .666 holy revolver out of my jacket and fired it squarely between his monstrous eyes.

The etherblast from it blew off the top of his head, driving his sharp horns in the alley’s walls as holy light ricocheted off the bricks and ripped all through his collapsing form.

The Chinese lady landed comfortably on a stack of vegetables, blissfully unconscious.

Time to call in the clean-up crew, although I think Delphi is already on that. She knows everything before it happens.