Desdemona Sewall
Chapter 6: Cousin Dexter
Maybe it was time to consult with Deszie before I managed to insult the rest of her family and friends. I’d done enough damage already and hadn’t even tried. Keep this up and I’d end up a Marine Science Specialist studying whales from Kansas.
Where the hell was Deszie? She wasn’t in the dining room. Not in the living room either—the one big enough to double as a basketball court where the dance floor was. I started to feel that flicker of concern, the kind that starts in your gut and climbs behind your ribs.
I hadn’t seen her go outside. And why would she? There was a full-on monsoon roaring out there now. These New Englanders might be used to weather like this—might even enjoy it in some weird, ancestral way—but even they knew better than to wander out in a night raining sideways, winds blowing like hell just for the fun of it.
Cold was one thing. But getting soaking wet and frolicking in gale-force winds on your parents’ lawn? That was another.
That was when I noticed someone else was missing. Deszie’s creepy cousin Dexter was nowhere to be found either. My protective nature kicked into overdrive. I’d heard too many stories about creepy cousins and uncles. I didn’t know the full story about that guy, but I got enough bad vibes from him to want to find out where he was. If he was anywhere near Deszie, I would show him a light that would teach him it was in his best interest not to be alone in the same room as her.
Dammit, where was she? I was getting worried. Just on a whim, I muttered, “Sarah, Dorothy, where is Deszie? I’m worried about her. Something’s giving me bad thoughts, and I don’t like it.”
A voice came back as fast as the thought, sounding like Sarah:
“David, thy beloved is sore beset by the foul spirit that men call Dexter. He seeketh to lay hold upon her mind, to bring her into bondage, and to make her a handmaid unto his wicked will. Make haste, if thou wouldst deliver her, ere the Evil One gaineth full dominion.”
“Where are they, Sarah? You have to tell me.”
Her message lit a fuse under me. When I found Dexter, I pictured him flat on his back, a greasy smear on the floor. I wanted him to know, down to his bones, what messing with Deszie would cost.
I heard Sarah again:
“David, know thou this: Dexter and Desdemona are within thy beloved’s chamber. Dexter doth behave himself with unclean intent toward her. Make haste, lest in thy tarrying he defileth what is pure.”
I took the stairs two at a time, my heart slamming against my ribs like it wanted out. When I shoved the bedroom door open, there he was—Dexter—hovering over his own cousin. His hands were where they shouldn’t have been, and Deszie ... Christ, Deszie just lay there, slack and empty-eyed, like somebody had switched her off. Tranced. Drugged. Gone.
That’s when the red haze came down. Rage, pure and simple—the kind you don’t plan and can’t stop. I wasn’t myself anymore. I was every bruised knee and every split lip from childhood, every shove into lockers, every punch Jeff Anderson ever landed on me just because he could. All of it boiled up—a lifetime of stored hate—and it found its target.
I hit Dexter. Not once. Not twice. Fists pounding like hammers, as if the bullied kid I used to be had finally crawled out of the dark to settle the score.
And for the first time, I didn’t feel small.
Dexter took the punishment and lay there, sucking in air, trying to piece himself back together. I was amazed he could even twitch a finger after the beating I gave him. He should’ve been down for the count—but somehow, he wasn’t.
What was it Sarah had called him? A foul spirit. The words came back to me like a cold hand on my neck. Was she saying he was a demon?
That thought sparked something buried deep—something my grandfather had told me when I was a kid. He used to talk about our ancestors, demon- and witch-hunters way back in the Middle Ages. I’d always thought it was just one of his old stories—the kind you laugh about at family gatherings. Cool, maybe even spooky in a campfire sort of way. But never real.
Only now, standing there with Dexter stirring on the floor like some broken insect, I wasn’t so sure.
Grandpa had made me memorize a phrase in Latin. Said it might come in handy someday. His philosophy was simple: better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. I remember rolling my eyes at the time.
But now—God help me—I scrambled through my mind, digging for the words. And then, like a key turning in a lock, they came back.
I remembered.
Daemon expulsus, et relinquens hoc ens corporeum, ad inferos reverte.
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