Tales from the Crypt - Demon Knight Read Online Free PDF

channel. Tupper got the mike and thumbed the button. “Go ahead, Mavis.”
    The radio was no top-of-the-line Motorola or RCA job, but he was used to its garbled crackling. “That’s a ten-four,” he said, and looked in the rearview mirror. Reflected from the back seat, the Salesman’s eyes were bright circles, his eyebrows arched with interest. “That was HQ,” Tupper said. “Somebody just tried to steal a car out of the Eureka Cafe parking lot.”
    The Salesman frowned. “Where might that be?”
    “Well,” Tupper said, “it might be in Wormwood. And that might be the hole-in-the-wall town just up ahead. And it might be that your thief is already doing his dirtiest. Works fast, don’t he?”
    The Salesman smiled a thin, satisfied smile. “Very fast, Sheriff. May I say the same for your driving now?”
    “You may,” Tupper replied primly, and poured on the gas.
    Uncle Willie had done some passing out in his life, and had later awakened to some hangovers that would drop an elephant like a bullet between the eyes, but this one, as he awakened from a nap of no more than twenty or thirty seconds, was right up there among the top ten. The top five, even. Aqua-Net hangovers were a special piece of hell always reserved for the topmost slots.
    He was staggering to his feet while assorted horses and mules kicked him in the head, or so it seemed. Crazy lights danced inside his eyeballs and his ears were full of steam engines chugging away and atomic bombs going off at random. When he realized he was erect, he slumped against the nearest object—the gas station—and began giving serious thought to religion, perhaps even Mormonism or Christian Science.
    A few yards away, another shape was coming to its feet. The smell of spilled gasoline was in the wind. A flicker of distant lightning exposed the scene for a millisecond: Willie cracked an eye open in time and saw a dead gas station bedecked with errant newspaper comics, tumbleweeds, and a flapping sandwich-board sign that proclaimed gas to be $1.64 a gallon.
    Propped against the wall, he opened his mouth and spit out a blot of something salty. He remembered being scared, remembered being hit by a car or falling tree. He lifted a hand and clutched his forehead against the forces that wanted it to split wide open. A car? A tree? His upper lip was torn and bleeding on the inside and a hot spot on the side of his head spoke of goose-eggs and concussions, brain hemorrhages, approaching death. Worse, his can of hair spray had rolled all the way to the street and left a long wet line of heaven behind it.
    “Shhsssmmmm . . .” he grunted. “Shsssmmm-shism-shit. Shit! My head! My head! Ow! Ow!”
    The other shape in the dark was on its feet now. Its shoes scraped on the asphalt as it wobbled upright and dragged itself, inexorably, toward Uncle Willie once more. One outstretched hand had a tiny spot on the palm that shone and winked with a hideous, greenish light of its own.
    “Devil!” Willie screamed at it. The wind tore at his ragged clothes and stood his white hair on end. “Devil!”
    The figure tottered to the right and slumped against the building a few steps away. It sagged an inch or two and said: “Didn’t see you in the dark, old fella. Sorry.”
    Uncle Willie hesitated, mentally pocketing a whole string of imprecations that might have captured him the hobo equivalent of an Emmy. He breathed easier, then clutched wildly at a pocket buried inside his wadded clothes. There was a pint of whiskey in there—and it was not broken. He fumbled it out with shaking fingers and partook of a long series of gargle-sounding swigs. “I could sue you,” he wheezed as he replaced the cap and ran his tongue over his lacerated lip, which now burned like Drano in the old eyeball. Beloved booze began immediately to wash through his system, erasing the remnants of panic. “However, I like courts and lawyers about as much as I like spiders in my shoes when I put them on. Care to