I stopped, feeling the futility of just walking, and decided to try something. I took out a cigarette and lit a match. The fire swelled up and for an instant I saw something very strange . . . the barest glimpse of stone walls and smoke. As I stood there smoking, I began to hear a sound nearby. It was a voice laughing.

“Billy?”

There was no reply, but the laughter got closer and began to move around me in a slow circle.

“I know it’s you, Billy,” I called out. “I know you’re there.”

The laughter stopped and I squinted as a figure appeared just ahead of me. It was the kid. He walked out of the darkness and stopped a few yards away.

“You can’t beat me in here, mister,” he said.

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“I’ve got friends in here.”

“You had friends back home, too,” I said, “but you killed them.”

There was a very long pause.

“They got scared. Brian said he wanted out.”

“Out of what, Billy?”

Billy stepped closer and I could see now that he had changed. His skin was rougher. Instead of acne, his arms and face had sprouted dozens of tiny gray horns.

“The pact. We made a deal and Brian wanted out. You can’t just break a deal.”

I took a hit off my smoke, keeping it nice and casual. “Yeah, I can see that. What was the deal?”

Billy laughed. “Simple, a little blood for some power.”

“So you got the power and all you could think to do with it was hurt people.”

That pissed him off. He stepped a little closer, and for the first time I could see that we weren’t alone. There were shapes moving in the background, hundreds of them.

“None of this would have happened if your old friend hadn’t come snooping around!” Billy spat.

“Maybe, maybe not.”

I used my last cigarette to light another. I offered one to the kid. He shook his head.

“So now what, Billy?” I gestured around to the crowd closing in on me. “You and your friends going to kill me too? Then who, your Mom?”

Billy looked genuinely stunned. “No! Why would I kill my mom?!”

“Well, those things—your buddies—are out there causing a lot of trouble. I had to shoot one to stop him from dragging a woman out of her car. What’d you think he was going to do to her? Kill her, rape her, eat her? Could have just as easily been your mom on the way to work.”

Billy twitched.

I’d planted that seed of doubt.

In the background, the shapes shifted restlessly. They seemed nervous. A large figure pushed through, coming up behind the kid. I took a step back. The shape was huge and muscular. It was a living shadow, a wall of blackness standing behind the boy who had sold his soul.

“This the deal maker?” I asked.

Billy nodded slowly. His skin looked as if it was clearing. The shape didn’t make a sound.