Tales from the Crypt - Demon Knight Read Online Free PDF Page B

drink with me?”
    The dark and frightening figure stepped close and, even in the bad light, became an ordinary man. He had a bloody nose that he swiped at with a sleeve as he took Willie’s bottle and regarded it. “Whiskey,” he said. Lightning hit the sky again and in its brief glow Uncle Willie saw deep holes for eyes, the urgent need of some shaving cream and a razor, and dark and dirty lines of soot smeared like warpaint along the lines of that face, which was not a very old face at all. The man put the spout of the bottle in his mouth and tipped his head back. One, two, three swallows, and he was done. Willie thanked the gods of mercy as it was handed back. Since the hair spray was gone this little bottle was the only thing that stood between him and death by sobriety. What a kind stranger, to have drank so little.
    “So,” Willie said, now that a bond of friendship was established, “what brings a young man like yourself here to Wormwood? And at such speed?”
    The man touched his nose again. “Wormwood, eh? Quaint. Real quaint. Gimme that bottle.”
    Willie started to protest, but the unwritten law among professional scavengers dictated that a man may drink twice of your bottle when offered it once, but no more. Willie handed the bottle over without enthusiasm, and watched while a good inch of it went down the other man’s gullet.
    “I need a place to bed down,” the man said after lowering the bottle to the height of his belt. “Know any place I could do that?”
    “Bed down?” Willie’s eyes were locked onto the bottle. Barely three, maybe four inches left. Did this man know what he was doing? Was he King of the Road enough to know the rules? “There’s but one public house left in Wormwood,” Willie said. “It’s called the Mission Inn. I can direct you to it from here.”
    “Oh?”
    “Yes.” Willie began pointing around. A hint of thunder crawled across the tossing sky as if unsure which way it should go; more lightning erected tiny ladders far out on the prairie beyond the town. “You see that sign? It used to be a grocery store. One block past it is the building that used to be a motel before they re-routed the highway and put us off the beaten track. There you would take a left and look for Mission Street in about six, maybe seven blocks. The street signs have mostly fallen but you can tell Mission Street because . . .”
    His voice trailed off. The dark stranger with the weird shiny dot on his palm had hoisted the bottle to his lips in a sudden move and was drinking again. “See here,” Willie snapped. “I offered you a drink in the name of friendship, yet here you stand swilling my liquor like root beer.”
    The man lowered the bottle and eyed Willie. “Take me there,” he said.
    Willie straightened. “What?”
    “Take me there.” He gripped the bottle by the neck and waved it in front of Willie’s face, sloshing its delicate innards. “Take me to your godforsaken hotel. Let me close my eyes and sleep until I die.”
    Willie took a backward step. “Sir, you only have to walk nine or ten blocks from where we stand and you will be there.”
    “Be where?” he shouted, advancing a step. “Where it might be safe? Where I can rest? Where I do not have to deal with this every moment of my life?”
    His free hand swung up and stopped a few inches in front of Willie’s face. The one dot of green light pulsated, pulsated, then shifted slightly. It went out.
    “And I,” the man said wearily as he dropped his hand and looked at it, “must once again fight unto the death.”
    Willie stood mute. This was a lunatic facing him here, a young man carrying a host of demons in his soul. Many hobos finally went senile or insane after years of bad booze and lousy nutrition he knew, but for this poor fellow the time had come far too early. Overdoses of hair spray could well be the culprit.
    “Okay,” Willie said, straightening his shoulders. “I will take you to the Mission. They know me