Thunder and Lightning

Here’s part 1 of my new Damon the Demon story, Cemetery Blues…

Damon the Demon stood beneath the porch to his mausoleum and watched the rain fall. The storm had started an hour ago, at about five o’clock in the morning, and the thunder and lightning and rain hadn’t let up once since.

This unexpected change in the weather had caught the cemetery’s caretaker off-guard and as such, he was soaked to the skin, and his favourite poncho was currently unwearable. He had been on the other side of the grounds when the heavens had opened, and had sought shelter in a number of bone houses, only for other resident dead and undead to tell him there was no room. They had all had the same idea, only they had arrived before he had.

In the end, Damon decided he might as well return home. He was already wet. And, if some problem arose in the cemetery which required his attention, everyone knew where to find him.

Once home, he quickly changed into dry clothes and towel-dried his hair before wrapping a hand-knitted blanket – a birthday present from his best buddy, the knitting witch Tabitha – around his shoulders and headed out to the portico to watch the storm.

Damon enjoyed a good thunderstorm. Usually. When he wasn’t caught up in it. As lightning lit up the sky in bright flashes, it illuminated the sprawling cemetery before him, bringing sharply into focus rows upon rows of gravestones, memorials and mausoleums which only moments before were almost invisible in the dark. Ironically, as a thunderclap sounded above, Damon thought the noise loud enough to wake the dead.

With the next flash of lightning, something to his far left caught his eye. There was movement in the cemetery. It took a moment for Damon to discern it was the outline of a person.

Damon watched as the figure, with their coat held above their head to keep off the rain, weaved through the gravestones in the semi-darkness. He couldn’t tell who it was, but when he realised where they were heading – towards his mausoleum – he groaned. He was cold and wet and in a thoroughly bad mood. He didn’t want company.

‘Damon!’ Damon!’

On hearing that voice, their identity was revealed. Damon’s bad mood suddenly darkened. It was Jabez.

Jabez was a ne’er-do-well who spent much of his post-living existence creating needless work for Damon. He haunted the cemetery, not in the literal sense as he wasn’t a ghost, but rather a revenant, preying on unsuspecting, still breathing visitors. Jabez was also responsible for physically ejecting him from the last bone house Damon attempted to take refuge from the storm in.

‘Move over, Damon,’ Jabez shouted, barging into the demon to make space for himself beneath the sheltered part of the porch.

‘The cheek of the blinking devil,’ Damon growled, as he collided with one of the pillars. Then to Jabez he said, ‘Go on. Sling your hook. Get out of here. You were fine throwing me out in the rain. Well, that works both ways.’ He took Jabez by the collar of his grubby tan coat, which was now flapping about him, and threw him off his porch.

‘No wait!’ Jabez exclaimed, using the headstone of one Mabel Collins, to stop himself from landing on the very boggy grass. ‘I’m not here for shelter, you fool. I could have found that anywhere hereabouts and with better company.’ He turned back to face the demon. ‘I’m here to report a crime. Something’s happened, Damon. Something bad. Something awful.’

To be continued…

Read Part 2 here

Written for: 13 Days of Samhain vol iii: Day 1: The Cheek of the Devil

This morning’s weather was part of the inspiration for this chapter. We woke to thunder, lightning, heavy rain, and subsequent surface flooding. Thankfully, the flooding receded fairly quickly in the village where I live, but some of the surrounding areas had it worse than us…