DAEMONOMANIA: Book Three of the Aegypt Cycle (6 page)

Did he believe it himself? No, he didn’t, not entirely, not yet. In the (actually rare) moments when he fully grasped what
he was indeed saying, he would often stop writing and stand in mute awe before his own impertinence, or laugh hugely, or quit
work for the day, wary and afraid. No, it actually seemed to him that those first shudders of the coming age that so many
perceived had in fact passed and left the world the same; there had come no irreversible disasters really, no salvations either;
the roads still ran where they had run; life was mostly hard work, and all the odds remained unchanged.

Which didn’t mean that he didn’t share with his readers the longing, whatever its source or name, that the future would be
of a different order than the past; that everything lost could return renewed; that the age to which he belonged was not this
one, but lay far behind this
one, or just ahead. He could not have thought up this thing, whatever it was, if he did not. What Pierce assumed, though—what
he would perhaps at the very end of his book conclude, what he
planned
to conclude—was that this longing or hope, real and effective as it was and in the past had been, belonged to the things
inside
and not to the things
outside
: that outside remains about as it always has, but that, inside, World-Ages are always failing and being renewed; that no life
ends without its share of such upheavals; that any moment will be, for some hearts, the twilight of Minerva’s owl. In the
end it was to be a fable, of general application; a truth about human nature more than about history.

De te fabula
.

In that way he could sell his book no matter what befell the world.

Like the brilliant boy he had known at St. Guinefort’s, his school, who had shuffled a deck of cards before him and asked
what his favorite card was; and when Pierce had answered (rather at random) that it was the jack of diamonds, the boy had
laid the deck facedown on his bed in rows, then allowed Pierce to take away what cards he chose in an elaborate ritual, ending
up with but one lone card on the bed; much hesitation and
mysterioso
, perhaps this hasn’t worked, then he turned over the card and it was indeed the chosen jack; and only long after did the
boy show Pierce the deck he’d used, all jacks of diamonds. Pierce asked what he would have done if Pierce had named, say,
the queen of hearts? I’d have put the cards away, the boy said; but almost everybody names the jack of diamonds.

It was noon, and Pierce pulled from the wickerwork étagère beside him (it shared the patio with his desk and chair and a glider
upholstered in striped canvas) a bottle of Scotch, and poured an inch into a glass.

At The Woods Center for Psychotherapy the parking lot was crowded with the station wagons and cars, many nice ones, of the
parents and spouses who had arrived to take the residents (never “patients”) back to the lives from which they had escaped
or been ejected to come here. The now ex-residents piled portable stereos and boxes of books and records and green rucksacks
into the backs or trunks of Foxes and Jaguars, or watched their parents do it; among some family bands the tension was already
mounting as Rose Ryder passed by. Up at the open flagged entrance of the shingled main building, once a family resort (some
residents called it the Next-to-Last Resort), staff members were parting from those who had graduated from the program, some
of whom were in tears, others sprightly and gay, all better now. Rose had to stop several times to give hugs and get them,
her hurry imparting a horrid
insincerity to the farewells she tried to get over with quick. Well
heyee
. Now you write, okayee? Hey I’m
sure
it’s gonna be
great
.

Away and upward then on the staircase that climbed up within the Tower on the building’s sunset side to the Lookout on the
top, a broad room once an open terrace and now screened and glassed. Way late. She went up, over, up again, over again around
the four sides of the structure, leaving earth. A spiral: coming at each floor to the same place again, only higher.

She stopped. She listened for voices above. She could see that the door to the Lookout was closed. If you can’t make it this
morning just don’t bother coming in at all anymore: Mike used to pretend to be able to say such things with calm force but
now suddenly he really could. And he had learned up there.

She circled upward, circling what she feared. Easy enough to say she had just forgot, and then to forget she had not really
forgotten. And Mike would let it go, let her go.

She could hear a voice now through the door at the top of the stairs, Ray Honeybeare’s, speaking softly. She pressed her cheek
against the door, smelling its odor of pine and varnish, and tried to hear words; waited for a pause within which she could
open the door; waited for what drew her to overcome what pushed her away.

She opened the door and slipped in, gaze lowered. Among those cross-legged on the floor was Mike, and he patted the place
next to him, smiling. Ray Honeybeare sat on the edge of a tiny fiberglass chair, leaning forward, his hugeness balanced with
remarkable delicacy there. He saw Rose, he definitely took notice of her, but made no sign, and did not pause.

“So I’m not going to speculate about the end,” he was saying, “or about God’s plans for the future of this world. And I don’t
particularly want to hear about your speculations either. But I know this: I know that the time we’re passing through right
now is a time unlike any other. A time full of possibility, for good or evil. A time when God’s kingdom comes very close to
our old earth, maybe not to arrive for good, maybe just to give us a glimpse. A time when some dreadful evil’s being done
too, a time of contention between God and the Devil, when the Devil sees his chance to make big gains and is doing his damnedest—yes,
his damnedest!—to take that opportunity.”

Rose lifted her eyes to Ray, a shy smile, in case his eyes met hers. They did. She felt weirdly penetrated, though his smile
was kind. He was big, both tall and heavy, and old, though just how old was hard to guess; his face was a network of fine
cracks, as though it had been shattered once to fragments and glued patiently back together, and his features
were small in its expanse: delicately winged nose, thin small mouth, very small nearly browless eyes of icicle blue. They
did what eyes she read about in books often did but which she had not actually observed till she saw Ray’s: they twinkled.
Glittered lightly as though faceted and catching the light when his big head turned.

“And what role in this do we have? What are we as workers in the mental health field supposed to be doing in these days, what’s
going to be our function and our job? Well, let’s open this book we have and do some reading.”

He plucked with a practiced gesture a black leatherback from the baggy briefcase at his feet and opened it. Rose saw that
it was stuffed with paper markers and place-holders of different colors. “Luke ten,” he said. Many of the others opened similar
books, and around her there was an autumnal rustle of leaves turned. She remembered now that Mike had told her to bring a
Bible (New Testament) and she clasped her empty hands.

Ray Honeybeare cleared his throat. “Here Jesus sends out seventy of his disciples to go on ahead of him through the world,
two by two. Seventy people, that’s a lot. And he says he is sending them out as laborers to the harvest, but he also says,
doesn’t he, that he is sending them out as lambs in the midst of wolves. And he tells them that where they are rejected, they
should shake even the dust of those towns from their feet, and they should make it clear that
the kingdom of God has come near
and that there will be some stiff judgments made against those places; but where they are well received, he says, they are
to heal the sick.

“Now there is no doubt they did so, as Jesus did; and how exactly did they do so? Well, when they return, what they say to
Jesus, the first thing they say, is—let’s look, ten seventeen—‘Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name.’”

He looked over them, having clinched his argument (so his face and eyes said) and waiting for them to catch on or up.

“The demons,” he said again softly. “Even the demons.” He read: “‘And he said unto them, I saw Satan fall like lightning from
heaven. Behold I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions,
and over all the power of the enemy
: and nothing shall hurt you.’”

Now there could be no mistake, his eyes said, and they were silent before him, getting it or maybe not getting it, and he
spoke with sudden force (Rose started a little in surprise or guilt): “
They were healing the sick by ordering out the demons that were inside those people
. That is what they were told to do, and that is why they were called laborers in the harvest and at the same time sheep among
wolves. That’s why
they came back and said—they didn’t say, Lord we laid hands on these people or Lord we gave these people a pill or Lord we
put these people through the talking cure like you told us. They said that the demons of illness are subject to us in your
name. And Jesus told them they can drive those spirits out, and the Enemy will not be able to hurt them. That’s it.”

He closed the book but did not put it down. “Now I’ve said this before and I will say it again. There is sickness and unhappiness
around you, all around you here in this place and in other places you might go into on a daily basis. And you’ve heard me
talk about how you can have this power against illness and suffering. And in order for you to have this power it’s first needful
for you to assent to one thing. One thing. You have to believe that this is now.”

He held the book before them.

“You have to believe that
this is now
, just as much as it was then, and that the kingdom of God has come near. That’s all. If you believe that this is now, you
will know who it is that’s being spoken to on every page and every line of this old book, and what you are being promised,
and what you are commanded to do.”

O
nly after she had crossed the bridge at Fair Prospect over the misty river did Rosie Rasmussen remember that she had promised
Mike that she would call this morning, so he could talk to Sam before they left. Too late now. She drove on toward Cascadia
and the interstate; Sam in the back seat played with the furnishings, turning on and off the reading lights, opening and closing
the never-used ashtrays, and Rosie replayed her last talk with Mike: made more clear what she had meant, listened more closely
to him; sometimes altered, in her replaying, what he had said, and what she had answered.

Mike—Mike had said—didn’t really want to press for custody. Yes he had had his bantam lawyer make that call, but actually
all he wanted from it was to get Rosie’s attention. He needed to talk, about him and her and Sam, and it was important she
hear him out. So many things were clear to him now, so many things that weren’t clear before.

Like what things, for instance?

For instance (and here he moved his hand toward her across the stone table where they sat, a table on whose surface a chessboard
was inlaid, beside a path up at The Woods) for instance that in many ways he had been a real shit where she was concerned.
He couldn’t have said that or even
thought
that a while ago and now he could.

And his eyes were big and clear in a way she had not seen before, and she said nothing though a couple of smart things had
occurred to her then and more now.

He’d come to see, he said, that a lot of what had happened between them had been his fault. He’d been very stupid; he laughed,
shamefaced, and shook his round head to think of it, how stupid he’d been. He noticed and picked up a fallen maple leaf (why
should she remember
these details, the whole interview had a psychedelic clarity in her memory, what was she supposed to have learned or done
there?) and spun it by its stem and watched it flail. He wanted to have her back, and Sam. That’s what he wanted to talk about.

She said nothing then, abashed by this, but now she wanted to say
Stupid how, Mike? Stupid about exactly what? What if it really didn’t have all that much to do with you, Mike, no matter how
stupid you’d been? What if it had to do just with me? What if, Mike, I just stupidly wanted to do what I wanted?

“Mom, I have to go pee.”

“No you don’t, hon. We just went.”

“I do.”

“Okay. I’ll start looking for a place.”

You can’t do all this alone, he’d said, you can’t face it all alone. You shouldn’t have to. This was when she described to
him the appointment she was headed for today, when she told him about the stuff the hospital sent, the booklet about
Epilepsy and You
she had read or tried to read. He regarded her closely and nodded attentively but couldn’t hide the fact that he had slipped
away; it wasn’t doctors and medicine he meant or wanted to talk about.

Sam had always been fine with him, he said. Thank God. Always fine here with him. And he was sure, absolutely sure, she was
going to be all right.

And he smiled, not exactly triumphantly, but with a kind of self-satisfaction that was surely intended to pass as reassurance
but which instead started Rosie’s deepest apprehensions, so deep she could not have said then and almost could not say now,
even to herself, what she felt: that indeed he had changed, that he had actually been replaced altogether; that when he smiled
that way his eyeteeth gave him away, so that she knew he meant not to cherish his daughter, if she were his again, but to
eat her.

“Whoops, Mom, too late.”

“Oh
Sam
!”

“I was kidding!” Sam shrieked, delighted.

“Oh you. Oh you little.”

“Oh you big.”

Maybe she
shouldn’t
have to face it all alone, whether she was able to or not. She didn’t want to, either. But she wasn’t going to let Mike back
into her life or heart or bed just so she wouldn’t be alone.

Brent Spofford had never said that aloud to her in all their talks about Sam—had never said that she shouldn’t have to face
it all alone,
that she didn’t need to. He had only and completely offered her and Sam all he had and could do. And yet he’d put the question
anyway, and her answer to him was the same.

The occult and back-end ways we get into cities now. Once we rolled into the great railroad stations built at the hearts of
them, and after an expectant passage underground, came right out into the teem and noise. Rosie cycled the freeways that were
knotted around Conurbana center, unable to break in; when she chose one likely looking exit she was only sent out again along
the bypass meant to help you avoid the city altogether; dove finally at random into a blank warehouse district, the city towers
falling out of sight as she went down, like a fairy city vanishing.

Now that she had departed from her mimeoed instructions she had no landmarks to look for. Her childhood memories of this city
did not contain hints for moving around in it, only glamorous or sinister tableaus, unconnected as dreams. A chess set of
ivory and red jade in the chock-f window of an antique store. The glass-bead curtain of a Chinese restaurant cocktail lounge,
and the smell of her mother’s Drambuie. The noisome toilet of an overheated children’s theater where one Christmas a bright
and loud production of
Little Red Riding Hood
had made her ill.

It was getting late. Sam slid otterlike over the back of the seat into the front next to her, and helped her mother get the
attention of deaf or uncaring citizens.

“Pediatric Institute?” a taxi driver she pulled up next to said. He rolled the toothpick in his mouth in puzzlement.

“A children’s hospital.”

“You mean little ones?”

“What?”

“Little ones. Sure. You’re right next to it.” Horns honked behind him, which he ignored. “This here’s the back side, is all.
Go around. One way this way, though. Make a circle.”

She made a circle, or a rough square, and drew up before it, a huge edifice in many parts, fitted cunningly into narrow streets
laid out for livery stables and chandler’s shops a hundred and fifty years ago. The name was spelled out in shiny metal letters
laid into the side of a sort of windowed bridge or flown passage that led from one new wing of it over to another, older wing:
Conurbana Pediatric Institute and Hospital. But on the high architrave of the older building was carved in stone letters another
name, City Home for Little Ones. The name it had once had, the first name.

The name it had had, Rosie thought, when Rosie had spent her time here.

“Mommy. Yets go.”

Yes when she had been here, when she had been kept inside here. All the closed doors she had pushed or forced open since she
had come back to the Faraways led down to here, to this door. Aware of horns blown behind her and the necessity of moving
one way or another, Rosie before the gray building could only hold out inward hands to receive, or fend off, or recapture
like a fleeing dream, the thing that had happened to her once in that place.

Rose Ryder tapped the ash of her cigarette into her palm, felt the soft gray worm fall there, almost too hot.

“Well I’ve always prayed,” she said. “
Holy Spirit be with me and in me
.”

“You prayed,” Mike Mucho said. “But did you really believe your prayers were going to be answered?”

“Well sure, I mean. It always made a difference.”

“If you ask for bread you’re not going to be given a stone. Remember that? Weren’t you a Bible camp kid?”

He said it not unkindly. They sat together on the stairs of the Tower, where they had come to a stop, halfway between up and
down: where Mike had made her sit down and talk, so that they could discuss this where no one else would hear.

“And about casting out demons?” she said. “That part?”

“What if it’s so?” he said.

She looked down at the end of her cigarette. What if it’s so? What would it be like to say it was, to know it was?

“It’s like a bet,” Mike said. “The people who bet on there being no God, or on a God who can’t do anything to help them—if
God
can
help and will help but they don’t believe it and don’t ask, they lose. But if you bet God
can
help and will help, what do you lose if he can’t? And if you’re right, and he can and will, you win. You win big.”

She had never thought of this. It seemed to be something you would only think up if you already believed it to be so, that
God would help. And she did.

“You know what Ray’s talking about,” Mike said. “The possibility of cures. Real cures. Not just
talking
forever. Changing somebody’s heart and mind, lifting the suffering from them.”

What’ll I do, she thought. What’ll I do. She made a small noise of interest and surprise: “Huh,” she said.

“Somehow you know I never did believe that anybody was going
to get better because of anything I did or said. I thought they could get better, but because of what
they
did themselves; I was only there so they could believe they could.”

“Dumbo,” Rose said.

He lifted his eyes at this response, and after a moment seemed to understand it; but he only said: “Rose. All my life I’ve
never, never got a single thing I wanted with all my heart. I want this. I want you to want it too.”

The cigarette had burned down to the filter, and Rose nipped off the living ash with thumb and forefinger, let it fall on
the rubber tread of the stair she leaned against; let it expire.

“Tell me what you thought,” he said. “What you’re thinking.”

She felt arise in her hugely what she had been thinking, not today but for so long now, so long that it was as though she
had never lived without it; wanted to tell it all, tell him how she had rolled her car on the Shadow River road for no reason,
how she had lived for weeks as though inside a globe of glass, unreachable; that she could not always remember what she had
done the night or the week before, or how things that she possessed had come into her hands. That she imagined futures for
herself only to see them die. How afraid she was that, without ever actually willing it, she might die too: wander away from
the path, get lost, exit.

“It’s hard,” was all she said.

Cure me, she wanted to say. Cure me.

“Hard,” he said. “Rose this is the most amazing and wonderful thing that’s ever happened to me, the most amazing and wonderful
thing that
can
happen. But it is hard. So hard. The hardest thing I’ve ever done. Like the hardest course you ever took in college, the
toughest game you ever played, the hardest hill you ever biked. You don’t just
buy
this stuff. You have to
try
. You have to try and keep trying. I didn’t know that.”

She watched him, still on his step, hands locked together and hung between his knees: as though she could watch him trying,
right here and now.

“He’s amazing,” Mike said after a while. He shook his head in wonder. She knew who he meant. “You know he sleeps like three
hours a night? He has unbelievable energy. See him preach sometime.”

She said nothing. Mike huffed out his breath, as though he were going to dive, as though the next thing to say took courage
or at least nerve. “So,” he said. “What I have to say, about this place and you working here. It’s this. If you can’t be in
on this, there’s nothing else here for you.”

“You mean I’m not getting asked to come back.”

“Well there’s not going to be anything left to come back to,” he said. “This place is coming to an end, an end as what it
was anyway. I can’t really tell you a lot more now, but the only thing now that will save it is God. If we give it to him.”

She felt she had to go to the bathroom, and really quickly; the need had come over her unrefusably without any warning. She
stood, still holding the tiny burnt offering in her hand. “Mike,” she said.

“An old world dying,” he said, as though quoting something she should know. “And a new world struggling to be born.”