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wrong. At that time of the morning everyone should have been out
working, but the barnyard was deserted except for a few chickens.
I could hear the two dairy cows mooing in the barn when they should
have already been milked and put out to pasture.
I had no idea what I would tell my parents. I hadn t thought
about what I would do when I got home, only that I wanted to get
there.
I ran in the back door expecting to find my mother in the kitchen,
but she wasn t there. My family rarely left the farm, and they cer-
tainly wouldn t have gone anywhere without taking care of the an-
imals first. My first thought was that there had been an accident.
Perhaps my father had fallen from the tractor and they had taken
him to the hospital in Clarion. I ran to the front of the house. My
father s wagon was tied up out front.
I bolted through the house, shouting into every room, but there
was no one home. I found myself standing on the front porch,
wondering what to do next, when I heard his voice from behind me.
You can t run from me, Catch said.
I turned. He was sitting on the porch swing, dangling his feet in
the air. I was afraid, but I was also angry.
Where is my family?! I screamed.
He patted his stomach. Gone, he said.
What have you done with them? I said.
They re gone forever, he said. I ate them.
I was enraged. I grabbed the porch swing and pushed it with
everything I had. The swing banged against the porch rail and Catch
went over the edge into the dirt.
My father kept a chopping block and an ax in front of the house
for splitting kindling. I jumped off the porch and snatched up the
ax. Catch was just picking himself up when I him in the forehead
with it. Sparks flew and the ax blade bounced off his head as if it
had hit cast iron. Before I knew it I was on my back and Catch was
sitting on my chest grinning like the demon in that Fuselli painting,
The Nightmare. He didn t seem at all angry. I flailed under him but
could not get up.
180 / Christopher Moore
Look, he said, this is silly. You called me up to do a job and I
did it, so what s all the commotion about? By the way, you would
have loved it. I clipped the priest s hamstrings and watched him
crawl around begging for a while. I really like eating priests, they re
always convinced that the Creator is testing them.
You killed my family! I said. I was still trying to free myself.
Well, that sort of thing happens when you run away. It s all your
fault; if you didn t want the responsibility, you shouldn t have called
me up. You knew what you were getting into when you renounced
the Creator.
But I didn t, I protested. Then I remembered my curses in the
chapel. I had renounced God. I didn t know, I said.
Well, if you re going to be a weenie about it, I ll fill you in on
the rules, he said. First, you can t run away from me. You called
me up and I am more or less your servant forever. When I say
forever, I mean forever. You are not going to age, and you are not
going to be sick. The second thing you need to know is that I am
immortal. You whack me with axes all you want and all you ll get
is a dull ax and a sore back, so just save your energy. Third, I am
Catch. They call me the destroyer, and that s what I do. With my
help you can rule the world and other really swell stuff. In the past
my masters haven t used me to the best advantage, but you might
be the exception, although I doubt it. Fourth, when I m in this form,
you are the only one who can see me. When I take on my destroyer
form, I am visible to everyone. It s stupid, and why it s that way is
a long story, but that s the way it is. In the past they decided to keep
me a secret, but there s no rule about it.
He paused and climbed off my chest. I got to my feet and dusted
myself off. My head was spinning with what Catch had told me. I
had no way of knowing whether he was telling the truth, but I had
nothing else to go on. When you encounter the supernatural, your
mind searches for an explanation. I d had the explanation laid in
my lap, but I didn t want to believe it.
I said, So you re from hell? I know it was a stupid question, but
even a seminary education doesn t prepare you for a conversation
with a demon.
No, he said, I m from Paradise.
Practical Demonkeeping / 181
You re lying, I said. It was the beginning of a string of lies and
misdirections that have gone on for seventy years.
He said, No, really, I m from Paradise. It s a little town about
thirty miles outside of Newark. Then he started laughing and rolling
around in the dirt holding his sides.
How can I get rid of you? I asked.
Sorry, he said, I ve told you everything that I have to.
At the time I didn t know how dangerous Catch was. Somehow
I realized that I was in no immediate danger, so I tried to come up
with some sort of plan to get rid of him. I didn t want to stay there
at the farm, and I didn t have anywhere I could go.
My first instinct was to turn to the Church. If I could get to a
priest, perhaps I could have the demon exorcised.
I led Catch into town, where I asked the local priest to perform
an exorcism. Before I could convince him of Catch s existence, the
demon became visible and ate the priest, piece by piece, before my
eyes. I realized then that Catch s power was beyond the comprehen-
sion of any normal priest, perhaps the entire Church.
Christians are supposed to believe in evil as an active force. If
you deny evil, you deny good and therefore God. But belief in evil
is as much an act of faith as belief in God, and here I was faced with
evil as a reality, not an abstraction. My faith was gone. It was no
longer required. There was indeed evil in the world and that evil
was me. It was my responsibility, I reasoned, to not let that evil be-
come manifest to other people and thereby steal their faith. I had to
keep Catch s existence a secret. I might not be able to stop him from
taking lives, but I could keep him from taking souls.
I decided to remove him to a safe place where there were no
people for him to feed on. We hopped a freight and rode it to Color-
ado, where I led Catch high into the mountains. There I found a re-
mote cabin where I thought he would be without victims. Weeks
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