Hostage to the Devil by Malachi Martin

Hostage to the Devil by Malachi Martin

Author:Malachi Martin [Martin, Malachi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-08-07T16:00:00+00:00


Uncle Ponto and the Mushroom–Souper

“Uncle Ponto!” Jamsie screamed in fury as he reached for the door of his apartment. “Uncle Ponto! This time, I’ll do it. By Jesus, I’ll do it. You’ll see! I’ll do it.” He banged the door after him. As he scrambled down the steps into the street and fumbled with the car key, he muttered angrily: “That does it—permanently, eh? That does it. I’ll fix you, you little bastard.”

Jamsie was shaking all over his tall, raw-boned frame. He was gripped by a sense of frustration that put him almost out of control of himself. His reddish hair and high complexion had always been startling for people. But now his cadaverous face was flushed with passion, his eyes were blazing. His appearance must have been frightening.

In a few moments he was at the wheel. Fumbling and cursing, he got the car started, made a quick, jerky U-turn, and was immediately off gathering speed as he headed away from San Francisco.

Jamsie was seething with an accumulated rage so great that he continued to shake. He had put up with Uncle Ponto’s annoyances for over six years. Finally he had had enough. Even though Ponto had left him alone a lot of the time, and even though he had been able to sleep in peace in his own apartment at night until fairly recently, and even though he had at times even relished the eerie company of Ponto and got a kick out of their encounters, nevertheless, on this early Saturday morning, he had had enough. Ponto wanted to move in completely and permanently and immediately, to take him over, him and his entire life. And something had broken inside Jamsie. He had to finish the whole thing now.

“You won’t bother me any more. You’ll get off my ass. You’ll…”

Jamsie’s voice trailed off. A glance in the rearview mirror was enough: Uncle Ponto was on the back seat, that same uncouth smirk on his face that always enraged Jamsie.

“I told you before,” Jamsie shouted violently into the mirror, “that is a dirty smile. A pig’s smile! A foul, swinish smile!” Then in a sudden excess of anger and frustration: “Hell! Hell! Hell!” He paused to negotiate a corner. “Hell again! Now you’ve asked for it, Ponto. This is it.

He lapsed into silence, breathing heavily, and drove on. Now and again he shot a furtive glance into the rearview mirror to reassure himself that Ponto was still there. Jamsie could see the squarish head ending in what was almost a point, the narrow forehead with the tiny zigzag eyebrows slanting upward, the large, bulbous eyes with the whites so reddened that you could hardly distinguish them from the deeply pink irises. And Ponto’s nose and mouth and chin—what there was of chin—had always reminded Jamsie of a long, thin pencil stuck in a very ungainly Idaho potato.

Ponto’s face looked as if it had been put together in the dark by several people working at cross-purposes, with each part coming from a different face.



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