“What on earth are you doing?”
Sim was kneeling, arms resting on the folding chair in front of him. His hands were pushed flat against each other awkwardly, imitating the praying posture of the sparse congregation. Gabriel watched in total shock; this was their sixth day sitting in to the church service, but never before had Sim shown any kind of partiality to religion. Sim spoke without opening his eyes.
“I’m praying for the safety and success of our mission.”
“Wouldn’t it make more sense to pray for the rumor to be false? Demons are dangerous creatures, Sim, and there are only two of us. Even if we locate it in time… It would probably be better if there was no ritual at all.” Sim continued to kneel.
“The letter of instructions you showed me from Commander Koh– it seemed you will likely be fired.” Gabriel shifted quietly in his seat. “I am praying that you can keep your job as well. I think that would require the ritual.” Sim pushed himself up with the back of the chair he was kneeling against, rising to his feet. “That’s why I prayed for it to be safe.”
Gabriel turned the screen of his Dalet to Sim. “You’ll need to pray harder then. There’s been no dip during this service.” Sim leaned in and squinted hard at the screen. He seemed dejected at the sight of the flat line.
Most of the congregation had already left, and only a select few old women remained while the pastor wiped at the pulpit with a small rag. The two walked towards the elevator, squinting at the bright light that poured through the window that sat across from it. When they reached the “floor of whores” as it was called, they followed the curve of the hallway past the shuttered storefronts, arriving at a small door that was painted to blend into the wall. Turning the handle, they stepped into a small office.
The room belonged to the fat soutenor, Kheng, who oversaw most of the business on the floor. After Sim’s exorbitant promises, and out of fear of the girls being poached, he had allowed them to spend the off hours in his own office. The room was rank, his body odor permeating every corner of the office. Sim sat on the squalid brown couch, dragging his finger across its arm and inspected the thick dust that accumulated on his fingertip. Gabriel flopped into the tall backed chair and leaned forward to rest his head on the arms he folded into a makeshift pillow on the rickety wooden desk. He had scarcely been home since formulating the plan– the brothels operated up to an hour before the sun rose, and the church had a morning and afternoon service. He had spent no more than four hours at home over what was now almost a week.
It had been even longer since Sim had last gone home. Gabriel’s apartment was closer, a small HDB in Bukit Merah to the south of Orchard, while Sim lived up north in Sembawang. When they weren’t at the towers, they would drive to Gabriel’s apartment to clean up and change into fresh clothes. I never expected the first person I’d invite to my place would be a middle-aged man.
“Do you want to swap places? You can sleep on the couch.” Before afternoon service, it had been Sim’s turn to rest. They would spend the whole night tonight glued to the Dalet, waiting for a sign that the demon was summoned.
“You couldn’t pay me to touch that thing. All yours.” Gabriel spoke without raising his head. He drifted to sleep listening to the buzzing of the fluorescent light overhead.
He awoke a few hours later to the sound of the office door flying open. The smell of body odor and cigarettes let him know it was Kheng. Raising his head, he saw he was right in his assumption. Kheng was standing in the doorway, wearing a tight cotton polo shirt with a stretched neckline. He held two energy drinks in his hand. He slid one across the desk to Gabriel and threw the other one to Sim who clapped the air instead of catching it. It rolled across the floor, Sim scurrying behind to pick it up.
“We open soon, one hour.” Kheng pointed at Sim, then Gabriel. “Find the man, give him to me. I deal with him.” He had given this speech every night thus far. Gabriel stretched, his body exhausted and sore from sleeping on the desk. Sim cracked open his drink, and half the can belched onto his shirt and pants. Kheng began to roar a raspy belly-laugh. Even his laugh is fat.
The Dalet had been sitting on the edge of the desk, still attached to Gabriel. He pulled on the cord, dragging it towards him. Nothing. Kheng gripped it from the desk, pulling Gabriel’s vest to the side.
“You filming me?” Kheng spat the words out warily.
“It monitors his blood sugar. Officer Rossi is afflicted with diabetes. We would not violate your privacy, Mr. Kheng.” Sim spoke, wiping his arm, sticky from the drink onto the couch. Kheng watched on, but did not seem to care.
“Blood sugar… okay. I am watching, Commissioner Sim.”
The pair stood and left the office, wandering the halls to stretch their legs. When they were out of earshot of the door, Gabriel began to speak.
“Where did he get the idea that you were a commissioner?”
“He called me that in the course of our discussion the other day. I thought it better to stand uncorrected.”
“Hmm. I thought you were too straight-laced for that.”
The hallway grew dark with the setting of the sun, and when the lights of the world outside flicked on, so did those in front of the brothels. Girls wandered into the halls, throwing open the shutters, touching up their makeup, and conversing with each other. A few of them waved at Gabriel and Sim, laughing to each other. Sim waived back. I’m so glad to be a known face in these halls.
Not wanting to scare off the customers with their presence, they ducked back into the small office and watched the Dalet screen closely. It rose suddenly, and plateaued, as it had every night. Next to the Dalet laid Kheng’s phone. where Sim was noting down the time and room the girls would text to their “boss” to cross-compare. Every time a new “client” purchased services from the girls, they would text Kheng the time that was paid for. Normally Kheng would monitor this closely to make sure that none of the girls lied about the time to pocket the extra cash. The past few nights, it had been Sim and Gabriel that would pour over the information to help narrow down which rooms would be occupied for a summoning.
Kheng was smoking an obnoxiously large cigar, and the pungent smell of stale smoke filled the small office. When Sim warned him about the fire hazard it posed, Kheng pointed at a bunch of wires hanging from the ceiling, where a smoke detector used to lie. “No problem,” he said. “Alarm won’t go off.” Gabriel began to feel a bit nauseous.
He stepped back into the hallway, letting out a wheezing cough. The air in the hallway carried an offensive tang, but it felt refreshing compared to the smoke. He glanced at his Dalet– nothing. Peering around the corner, he saw the back of a man enter the rose-patterned door of a massage parlor. The girl standing outside followed after him, but she topped and turned, catching Gabriel’s eyes. She was young, no more than twenty-two, with long brown hair. She was unusually tall and slender, and she carried with her an air of playfulness. What’s her name? She had started brief conversations with him the past few nights, but he couldn’t bring himself to remember how she had introduced herself. Catching Gabriel’s eye, she smiled and fluttered her fingers in a wave. Gabriel forced a smile back. When she had disappeared into the shop, Gabriel sighed and returned to the office. Sim was still attempting to explain fire safety through hacking coughs to an obstinate Kheng.
“Hey, big guy, what's the name of that girl working at the Flower Fields Massage? I can’t remember it for the life of me.” Sorry to interrupt your gripping debate, Sim. Kheng stuck his cigar into Gabriel’s face and laughed.
“Stupid boy thinks the whore loves him. I saw you talk.” Kheng snatched his phone from Sim’s clutch, and began to tap at it with his index finger. “She Angela. You like her? She free now.” He laughed to himself again. “You get a discount, officer.”
“Very tempting, thanks.” Gabriel waved the smoke out of his face. “Somehow, I’ll have to pass. She’s with a client anyway.”
“No, no text from her. She free.” Kheng threw the phone on the desk. Her last text was from the previous night; she had sent nothing about the client he watched her enter with.
“I guess I just saw her boyfriend then, Kheng. Maybe she met him on the job before. A fat tourist or something? How sweet.” Gabriel had only met to tease Kheng, but Kheng sputtered in anger.
“She’s with man?” Kheng jammed his cigar into a dirty ashtray that sat on the desk until the paper began to split. “That bitch stealing. Pocketing it.” He pushed Gabriel aside and strode to the door. “My fucking cut.”
“H-hey, I’m just messing around, Kheng. I’m sure she’s going to le-”
Kheng slammed the door behind him, causing the whole office to shake. The office fell quiet for a few minutes. Sim sipped nervously from his can.
“Have you checked the Dalet recently?”
Gabriel pulled the device from his vest and changed the screen to look at the reading. The previously plateaued line sharply dropped.
“Holy shit! The dip! The energy dipped!”
Sim jumped up from the couch, knocking the can onto the floor, where it began to spill. He blinked again at the screen– there was no mistaking it. It was just as Sim predicted. Gabriel grabbed the sheet Sim had been working on, and the two bolted from the office door.
“We need to check these rooms first.” Sim pointed at the top of the list. “We’ll go in together.”
“No, wait.” Gabriel put his hand out to stop Sim, and then pointed at the Flower Fields massage parlor. “Angela, she never checked in with Kheng.” Sim responded with a blink of confusion.
“The man she’s with… it’s probably him. The summoner. She probably didn’t text him because…” a chill hit Gabriel. “We go there first.” Sim placed his hand on his holster and nodded. They began to sprint through the hall towards the store. Gabriel shouted at the girls posing outside of their establishments to leave, but they just stared in confusion.
“Sim, get them out of here, and call DMI headquarters for backup. Tell them what’s happening.”
“Gabriel, we should go in together.”
“I’ll be fine. Join me after they’re safe and you call this in.” Sim began to directing the women towards the elevator. Pressing his back against the patterned door, Gabriel loaded his Dalet with divine energy.
He spun around and threw the door open.
The massage parlor was dark, lit only by a little salt lamp in the corner of a cramped waiting area. Electronic music was playing at a deafening volume, the sound rattling his bones. Gabriel made his way behind the front desk, finding an intercom system on the wall. He pushed a few buttons, but the music continued. Turning his Dalet around, he smashed the end of his Dalet against the system. The music abruptly shut off. Now that it was quiet, he could hear a wet crunching noise.
Pushing forward, he reached a hallway lined with rooms covered by deep-red curtains that pooled on the floor. As he crept towards the source of the crunching, he almost slipped and fell. Steadying himself, he strained his eyes towards the floor. He had stepped directly on some small object, losing traction. Kneeling down, he realized that it had been a phone, the screen now shattered under his weight. Kheng’s. His knee that touched the floor was wet, and he could make out that further up ahead was a stream of something trickling from the last room.
“Kheng?” He called out, his voice shaking, but there was no reply. Only a deep cracking noise, like a large branch ripped from a tree. He stood in front of the curtain, aiming his Dalet forward with his right hand, left hand on the velvet cloth. He threw the curtain to the side.
Kheng lay flat on his back, blood pooling around him. Kneeling next to his body was the silhouette of a woman, slender and thin, back to the curtain. Kheng was dead, and blood was foaming from a gash in his throat. A bed sat at the far end of the room, with another body lying motionless on top. Dark stains splattered the wall, illuminated by the blue light of a screen that was partially obfuscated by the bedsheets.
The silhouette ripped Kheng’s leg off, and Gabriel realized that the snapping sound was really his leg being jerked back and forth until the bone would snap. The silhouette ripped off a bite of flesh, and turned towards Gabriel, blood dribbling from its chin.
It was the prostitute, Angela. Or it was. Her eyes were shrewd and cruel, her mouth twisting haphazardly as she chewed. Gabriel’s mind repeated her name in his head; Angela, Angela Angela. Whatever had happened, what was sitting before him was no longer Angela. It leaped forward from the grounds, hands outstretched. Gabriel stepped back and fired his Dalet, hitting it square in the gut. It shrieked, two voices from one body, and clutched its stomach. He prepared another shot, but the demon reached backwards towards the bed– towards the blue-light. It grabbed onto it, throwing the sheet back. Gabriel could now see that the light came from a device resembled a crude Dalet, but with two sharp prongs, both of which had been caked in blood. He shot again, but the demon had anticipated his move. It slid across the floor, kicking Gabriel’s feet out from under him. He fell forward, chin smashing the ground hard. The air in his body was knocked out of him and blood flooded into his mouth. His Dalet flew out of his hand, skittering across the ground.
The demon stood up and grabbed Gabriel by the nape of his neck, pulling him to his feet. It flung him head first into the wall. He tried to throw his arm up to absorb the blow, but he only managed to pull one over his face. He hit the wall hard, and fell onto the corpse in the bed.
His vision was now blurry, and even the small traces of light in the room hurt his eyes. The demon was still nursing its stomach, but it stooped down towards Kheng’s body and crushed his head. Gabriel tried to push himself up, but a sharp pain coursed through his right arm. The demon licked the flesh and brains of Kheng from its fingers, moaning in satisfaction to itself. Gabriel fumbled for the cord on his vest with his left hand. He tugged weakly at it, but he could tell from its weight that the Dalet was still attached. Thank you Koh. Thank you for your wit.
Gabriel pulled the Dalet up the bed, but the demon had finished eating, and turned back towards him, seemingly no longer pained by the previous shot. His eyes were still blurry, but as it approached, he could see two puncture marks on Angela’s brow. If the shot from the Dalet wasn’t able to critically wound it, then this demon is probably extremely strong. Damn you, Koh. How far away is backup? Can I hold her off until then?
“No, you can’t.” The two voices spoke again from Angela. It tossed the pronged device in its hand.
Gabriel opened his mouth to reply, but only blood sputtered out. Panic set in. Where is Sim?
“Sim can do nothing for you.” She placed her hand on Gabriel’s head, gently pushing the hair off of his forehead. His head seared in pain, and he could tell that his head was split open. When she was done, she sucked his blood off of her fingers. He tried to bat her away with his left hand, but she laughed and pushed it to the side, holding him in place with a hand pressed hard against his throat. Then, she stuck the prongs deep into the side of her neck. The device began to shake. The light from the screen shrouded the room in a deep red glow. After a minute, the device chirped. Gabriel’s throat was searing in pain, and he struggled against her. How is she so strong?
“Still yourself, Gabriel.”
It happened in the blink of an eye. He watched the pointed metal ends slide out of her neck, wet with blood. In the next second, there was a loud bang, a dual-shriek, and the naked body of Angela fell on top of him. He couldn’t tell where her device had gone, but her hands were now empty. In another moment, Angela, still shrieking, had pushed off of him and bounded towards the entrance.
Through blurred vision, Gabriel could still make out the shape of Sim. His arms were stretched straight-out, and he could just barely make out the wisp of smoke floating from the barrel of his handgun, illuminated by the device, wherever it lay.
Angela tackled Sim to the ground, and the two began to shout. He pulled desperately at his cord again, but his Dalet was stuck to something. Right arm pressed to his side, he slid forward, following the taught cord with his fingers, wrestling it free from the bedside table it was wrapped around. Sim had fallen quiet, but Angela was still hunched over him, digging away at his torso ferociously. The Dalet finally gave, and as he swung it around, pointing it at the demonic Angela.
He could instantly recognize the blue uniform of a November Taskforce, which now stood to the side of the demon. The man’s face was covered by a cloth mask, and he held a device similar to the demon’s, with the two bars weaving around each other to a single point. He thrust upwards, plunging it into the demon's chest. Angela gurgled and went limp, still impaled on the blade. The agent planted his boot firmly against her head, dislodging her body with a kick. She fell to the floor with a damp thud.
“Sim…” Gabriel called out, his voice ragged. Agents flooded the room, grabbing Angela, while others rushed to tend to him. Until his vision had faded away, he remained transfixed on the motionless body of Sim.