YOU'RE NOT DOING IT RIGHT." [Note--I seem to recall this chapter existing before the prologue, but I can't be certain.]
Damien raised his hands from the keyboard, glaring with annoyance at the boy standing by his side, watching his every move at the new computer. "Okay then, Einstein, show me. Where do I put my stinkin' fingers already?"
"Like this!" Harvey said in an exasperated tone, placing his adoptive uncle's fingers on the A, S, D, F, J, K, L, and semicolon. "Miss O'Hare said that's how you type. Everybody knows that. Duh."
"Well then, just call me typing impaired," Damien snorted, getting up. He'd never wanted to learn how to use the thing anyway. "I don't really see what the big fuss is about. It's just mechanical writing, and I'm not a writer. I'm a singer. Duh! Everybody knows that!"
"But you write songs," Harvey insisted. "What if you wanna type it out?"
Damien opened his mouth and rang.
Both of them paused.
The phone rang again.
"Whew," Damien said. "Glad that wasn't me after all."
He turned to the phone, going over to pick it up. Harvey sighed and sat down at the computer, knowing Damien was lost to him forever.
"Hello!" Damien greeted. "This isn't an answering machine, so don't leave your message at the sound of the beep as it's only the microwave. Who's calling?"
Harvey looked at him funny. Damien snubbed his nose and crossed his eyes at him, and Harvey turned his back again.
"Well well well!" Damien said. "It's been a long time! How're ya doin'? Been to any good fights lately?"
Harvey's adoptive sister Esmeralda popped in. "Get off," she said to her brother. "I wanna play dominoes."
"Buzz off!" Harvey snapped.
Ez grabbed his arm and they started scuffling, roughly yet in a playful way. Over on the phone Damien just listened with a strange look on his face, which grew even stranger with each passing moment.
Ez got a hold of Harvey's hat. "Got your hat!" she giggled.
"Give that back!" Harvey shouted, jumping for it. His sister held it over her head--she was taller than he was--and laughed at him.
Harvey tried again. "If you don't give it back right now I'll--"
"Hey! Will you two quiet down?"
The kids stopped fighting immediately. Damien glared at them over the phone, then left the room, quietly talking into the receiver. [Note--by "glared at them over the phone," I believe I meant he had lowered the phone a bit and was glaring at them over it. Awkward, yes.] They stood there in stunned silence, not used to being yelled at. Not by him.
"What's wrong with him?" Harvey finally asked, bewildered.
"I don't know," Ez admitted. "Maybe he's just tired." They crept after him down the hallway, to his room. The door was closed. They put their ears to it and tried to listen but that didn't work, so Ez left the hallway and came back with two drinking glasses.
"What're those for?" Harvey asked.
"Listening in," Ez replied. "I saw it in an old detective movie. Here, try one. It's really good."
Harvey accepted a glass and stood there stupidly while his sister placed the glass to the door and put her ear to the glass. "Oh, okay," he said, and did the same.
There wasn't much to be heard at first. Damien would only occasionally say something like, "Mm-hm," or "When did you find that out?" The two kids stood in the hallway, growing irritated. Finally Damien said, "Is she still down there with you? Do you think she'd mind if I talked with her?" A pause. "Okay. I'll be down there in a little bit. Try not to rile her up or anything, okay? I know what she's going through." There was a shhkk of the antenna sliding down and the kids dashed away from the door. Damien found them in the kitchen, drinking lemonade from their glasses, looking as innocent as could be.
"Glad to see you've made up," he said shortly, knowing what they'd done but having no real proof.
"Yeah," Harvey said. "Ez admitted she was wrong about being a snotnose so I told her I forgave her."
"What?" Ez asked indignantly. "You little snotnose! I never said anything like that!"
"I have to be going down to the police station," Damien said, interrupting their renewed argument. "Don't worry, it's nothing terribly important." That was actually a half-lie--at least it didn't involve him, not yet. [Note--you can see from this scene alone that I had no real understanding of shifting POV. The POV is that of Damien, then the kids, then Damien, then the kids, then Damien, etc. While the tone of the writing and the humor used are much as I write now, I'd definitely fix the bad POV in a rewrite.] "Officer Brown just has someone down there he'd like for me to meet. Kat's somewhere upstairs reading or meditating or something. If you need anything, just call her. I'll be back soon, okay?"
The kids nodded obediently.
"That's good," Damien said, and he went to the utility room, grabbed up his jacket, and went out onto the porch. He was the one to eavesdrop now as he put his ear to the door and clearly heard Ez and Harvey start their fight anew. They'd already forgotten about him. Satisfied, he put on his jacket and left.
Damien was not unused to visiting the Michigan State Police station. He'd been there many times before, not always for pleasure, but then again he didn't count on this being for that reason either. Officer Brown was a good friend of his, they having met last summer--only about two months ago--following several incidents involving a local cult called Scorpio. [Note--I wouldn't call them GOOD friends, but at least they were on amiable terms. WARNING, here follows a SPOILER for the ending of D Is For Damien.] Somehow he knew deep down that, even after the crooked police lieutenant Mabarak had been drowned following a tunnel collapse and the high priest Luther Broderick had escaped, something else had to happen, and happen soon. And he had another feeling telling him that the woman Officer Brown had wanted him to meet at the station was somehow connected.
This lady just came in complainin' about some stuff she found around her house. Seems she keeps gettin' these freaky phone calls too. Someone's been harassing her pretty bad.
Someone, or something?
He arrived there around four--it was a Saturday, so the kids were out of school--and parked out front. A couple of policemen exiting the building commented on his car--it was, after all, a Lamborghini, something not usually seen in a city like Cheboygan--on their way to their own vehicles. Damien popped in, his first reflex to glance at the main desk. His old nemesis Officer Jones wasn't there; instead it was a younger policeman, a rookie from the looks of it, who glanced up at him as he entered and offered a smile. Damien nodded back; he'd have to find out who this guy was later on. Officer Brown appeared from a back room, gesturing him to follow. [Note--that should be "gesturing at him," but I don't think this was a typo, just awkward phrasing.] Damien did so, and they entered the interrogation room. They were not the only ones there. A man dressed in a suit jacket and hat was leaning against the wall, and a woman--evidently the one Officer Brown had told him about--was seated at the table, looking distressed. When she glanced up at him he saw a faint trace of hope flicker across her face.
Does she already trust me that much?
"Hi, Detective Mulroy," the man in the suit jacket said, pushing himself away from the wall and holding out his left hand. [Note--an odd number of my detectives appear dressed like gumshoes from the Forties. Mulroy, Mabarak, and Morris are among them. Hm.] Damien shook it suspiciously; he beginning to get a little leery about detectives after what had happened with Lieutenant Mabarak last summer. [Note--a missing "was" before "beginning."] "You're Damien, this is Officer Brown, and this is Ms. Leslie Laws. There, we've all met. Now can we get down to business?"
Damien saw a resemblance already. It seemed like every detective he'd ever met was snappish and had a surname that started with an M. [Note--a weird, semi-unintentional running gag.] "Hold on a minute, please. I'm kinda lost here, so how about a little more info, huh?"
Detective Mulroy sighed but gave in. "De-tec-tive James Mul-roy," he said slowly. Damien frowned. "I am of I-rish de-scent. This is Of-fi-cer Brown. He is of Af-ri-can de-scent. And this is Ms. Les-lie Laws. She has a com-plaint. There, is that better?" [Note--I wanted to convey that Mulroy is of Irish background and so did it in this really stupid manner. Never mind that his ethnicity doesn't matter to the story much!]
"Much," Damien muttered, already beginning to dislike the guy. He sat down across from the woman. "Hi there, Ms. Laws--"
"Please, call me Leslie," the woman said in a soft voice. She managed a slightly embarrassed smile. "'Ms.' makes me feel like I'm married or something."
A faint smile tugged at the corner of Damien's mouth. "Okay. Leslie. You probably already know I'm Damien, but I don't really have much of an idea why I'm here other than what Brown told me. Detective Mulroy, would you like the clear the air?"
"Sure," Mulroy said, brushing off Damien's sarcasm. "Ms. Laws here called in earlier today with a complaint. A pretty weird complaint. Hey, Brown, think you could call in Haley?"
"Sure," Brown echoed, leaving the room. A moment later he came back in with the same officer who'd been manning the front desk. He took off his hat for some reason and looked around at them. "Dami, this here's Officer Jacob Haley. He's new here. D'you mind telling Damien what you saw this morning?"
"Not at all," Haley said, offering another smile, which for some reason didn't look the least bit out of place. "Ms. Laws called in here this morning with a--complaint, I guess you'd say, so I went out to her house to check it out; this was around nine, right?"
Leslie nodded.
"Okay. So I went out there--it's kind of a wooded area--I go to the front door, she lets me in and takes me to the back door and there's this--" He abruptly broke off, then tried again, as if unsure what to say. "I mean it looked like--I mean it was--"
"Bring in the bag," Mulroy said, giving Brown an anticipatory look. The cop left again and came back in with a plastic shopping bag. Even though it was white and translucent Damien could see something red lining the inside. A strange smell filled the air, and Leslie covered her face.
Mulroy took the bag from the other officer and plopped it on the table. "Mind spreading out that newspaper there, Damien? This is kinda messy. Don't wanna get it all over. Police regulations."
"Not at all," Damien said, picking up a Tribune which sat nearby, opening it up and spreading it over the table, curious. [Note--that would be the Cheboygan Tribune, our local paper. They always have the most atrocious typos and grammar errors. Worse than this stuff I type up.]
"Better back up a little," Mulroy warned, and as soon as they did so, he upturned the bag and dumped its contents onto the newspaper. Haley and Brown covered their noses. Leslie turned away. And Damien gaped with shock at the sight of the severed goat's head lying before him.
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