The Demonologist (15 page)

After that, we started skipping school on purpose.

Here’s how the scam works:

Dad signs me out—showing up out of nowhere, so I never know when I’m gonna get sprung—and we decide what to do only after we hit the street. Most of the time we just walk and walk around the city, looking at stuff, talking and talking. Dad calls it “Playing tourists in your backyard.” I call it Wandering Around New York. Doesn’t matter. It’s the BEST.

So far this year, we’ve ended up on this street in Chelsea with these weird art galleries (there was this one sculpture of a man with flowers growing out of his bum!), went for not one, not two, but THREE carriage rides around
Central Park, and had a Vietnamese noodle picnic halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge.

This week we joined a line without knowing what the line was for. Turned out to be the Empire State Building. I hadn’t been up there before. Neither had Dad.

“I’ve seen the photos,” he said.

“Photos are never the same as the real thing,” I said.

After about an hour we went up the elevator and out to where you can see the whole of Manhattan. The park, the two rivers, what looked like little TVs in Times Square.

It was weird how quiet the city is from up there. What’s noise on the street is like a hum. Something tuning up. You can’t tell if it’s getting ready to howl like an animal or sing like an angel.

I read on. Not sure what I’m looking for. More, I suppose. More of her. More of what I knew, as well as what I didn’t.

And I find it.

There’s a boy who’s coming to visit a lot lately. Not in this world, but the Other Place. A boy who is no longer a boy.

His name is TOBY.

He’s so sad it’s almost too hard to be with him. But he says he is meant for us. Because something Very Bad where he comes from has a message for Dad. And TOBY is going to deliver it.

TOBY says he’s sorry. That he wishes he could just hang out, show me he’s still just a kid, like me. Once, he said he’d like to kiss me. But I know, if the thing asked him to, he would pull my tongue out with his teeth if we ever did.

I don’t know a Toby. And as much as I don’t
want
to know this one, I believe I soon will.

She is you
, O’Brien said. But Tess acknowledged her demons—our demons—in a way I never could.

Until now.

On the next page there’s a drawing. Like me, Tess was more a writer and talker than a drawer, and the image she has sketched here
is rudimentary. At the same time, the image is all the more striking for its simplicity. The few details that distinguish it, that make it more than just “A Man Outside a House,” indicate the intent behind them. In a glance I can see that Tess has witnessed this scene before. Or had it shown to her.

A flat horizon. So broad it travels from one page over to the next, though no part of the picture appears on the second page other than this straight line of land and towering sky. It works to isolate the subject matter even more.

On the first page, a square house with a single tree in the yard, a straight gravel lane leading up. A fat wasps’ nest under the topmost point of the gabled roof. A rake leaning against the tree. And me. Approaching the front door with a mouth drawn straight-lined to show grimness, or perhaps pain.

Only two words on the page. Darkly etched beneath the ground I stand on like a system of roots.

Poor DADDY

I close the journal with shaking hands.

TV. I get it now. It’s the crushing loneliness of motel rooms that makes everyone turn on the TV immediately upon entering.

I flip the channels until I hit CNN. And there it all is: the great American pageant of distraction. I crack open a can of Old Milwaukee and let my vision blur at the split-screens and ticker tapes of information. Body counts, celebrity rehab ins-and-outs, box-office takes. The talking heads wearing so much foundation they look like ingeniously animated figures from Madame Tussaud’s.

I’m not really watching. Not really listening. But something draws me closer to the screen.

It takes a while to stir myself to full attention and figure out it’s not a passing news item or spoken name that struck me, but numbers. A series of digits skittering across the bottom of the screen. Each of them preceded by a city. The world’s closing stock market indexes for April 27th.

 . . . NYSE 12595.37 . . . TSE 9963.14 . . . TSX 13892.57 . . . DAX 5405.53 . . . LSE 5906.43 . . .

New York. Tokyo. Toronto. Frankfurt. London.

The world will be marked by our numbers
.

And it has been.

But what does it mean? Proof. That’s what the man in the chair had promised. At the time, the voice that wished to be known as a collective of demons didn’t answer
what
the numbers would prove. It would be clear when the time came. Which it is, now. The correctly foretold stock market closings prove the voice was right, that it predicted a series of events beyond any reasonable chance of coincidence or opportunity for trickery, something a man in a Venetian attic, sane or otherwise, could never do. The passing of one of Brother Guazzo’s tests. One that establishes the voice as inhuman.

That it is
real
.

I’m up. Tossing the beer can in the garbage, where it attempts a leaping escape with spits of foam. Pacing back and forth, from washing hands at the bathroom sink to squinting out the peephole at the highwayside night.

The Unnamed had made a promise of his own.

When you see the numbers, you have only until the moon.

The moon itself isn’t a time. But it belongs to a rhythm, a way of
measuring
time. The beginning of the cycle being the new moon, when its surface is darkest. As close to the total absence of sunlight as the world comes. It’s why it plays such a large part in witchcraft lore, a tool for biblical diviners and Egyptian magicians alike. Demons, too. It’s a way to foretell a person’s death, among other things. I recall a particular method from my readings where the Moravian Jews would fix the new moon between the forks of a tree branch. In time, the face of a loved one would appear. If the leaves of the branch fell, they were destined to perish.

So the next moon is to be the darkest hour for me, too. The moment when Tess will be out of reach once and for all.

The child will be mine.

I grab my phone, look up a site that shows a detailed worldwide lunar calendar. Find when the next new moon arrives. Read the result twice. Then again, slowly. The date—the exact hour, minute, and second—all inscribed to memory.

If I cannot find her first, my daughter dies at 6:51:48 on the evening of May 3rd.

Six days from now.

I
HAD A PROFESSOR ONCE WHO, IN ONE OF HIS WILDLY OFF-TOPIC,
possibly alcohol-fueled rants, argued that if you were to ask the average American why we bothered to fight the last war in Europe, and if that average American were to be perfectly honest, his answer could be distilled to something like “A Twenty-four-Hour Denny’s in every town.” It got a big laugh. In part because it was likely true.

So here’s to a Mac ’n’ Cheese Big Daddy Patty Melt (from the special “Let’s Get Cheesy!” menu) with a side of onion rings at 11:24
PM
at the Denny’s in Rothschild, Wisconsin. Here’s to wide-beamed waitresses with coffee pots glued to their palms. Here’s to the comforts of a clean, well-lighted place, a deep-fried oasis along the open four-lane. Here’s to freedom.

I’m not myself.

Having driven all day, bidding hellos and farewells from behind the Mustang’s windshield to passing Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana vistas, spinning the AM radio dial between raving evangelicals and Lady
Gaga, then switching it off to drift in long, haunted silences, I am ravenous and lonely. And Denny’s provides a salve for both conditions.

“More coffee?” the waitress asks, the coffee pot already half-tipped in the direction of my cup. I need more caffeine like I need a Louisville Slugger to the head, but I accept. It would seem rude, if not unpatriotic, to do otherwise.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. A mouse awakened from its lint-nested slumbers.

“I’ve been thinking,” O’Brien says when I answer.

“So have I. Not always a good thing to do. Believe me.”

“I want to suggest something.”

“The Maple Bacon Sundae?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Ignore me.”

“David, I think you’re creating your own mythology.”

I sip the coffee. The taste of liquefied rust. “Okay.”

“It’s a delusion, of course. I’m sure a very real-seeming experience for you, but a delusion nonetheless.”

“So you’ve decided I’m nuts.”

“I’ve decided you’re grieving. And your grief has taken your mind in a particular direction, led it to a place where its pain might be rendered in a comprehensible way.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re a professor of myth, right? You teach this stuff, live it, and breathe it: the history of man’s efforts to make sense of pain, of loss, of mystery. So that’s where you are, what you’re actively creating. A fiction that works in a tradition of previous fictions.”

“You know what, O’Brien? I’m tired. Can you give me the summer school version?”

O’Brien sighs. I wait for her, gazing out the window next to my booth. The parking lot is floodlit as though in anticipation of a sporting event, a game of football to be played among the reversing pickups and minivans. Yet there are still dark corners where the light doesn’t reach. In the farthest one, a parked, unmarked police car. The dark
outline of its driver’s head just visible over the seat. A trooper catching forty winks.

“Remember Cicero?” O’Brien starts.

“Not personally. A couple millennia before my time.”

“He was a father, too.”

“Tullia.”

“That’s right. Tullia. His beloved daughter. And when she died, he was crushed. Couldn’t work, couldn’t think. Even Caesar and Brutus sent letters of condolence. Nothing helped. So he read everything he could get his hands on about overcoming grief, conquering the cold fact of death. Philosophy, theology, probably some black magic thrown in, too. In the end, though—”

“ ‘My sorrow defeats all consolation.’ ”

“A bonus point for the correct quotation, Professor. All of Cicero’s reading and research didn’t help. There was no spell he could cast to bring Tullia back. End of story.”

“Except it
wasn’t
the end of the story.”

“No. Because that’s where myths are born. At the point where the facts end and the imagination carries on, masquerading as fact.”

“The burning lamp.”

“Exactly. Somebody in Rome digs up Tullia’s tomb in the fifteenth century and finds . . . a lamp! Still lit after all these centuries!”

“Cicero’s undying love.”

“Impossible, right? A
literal
fire could never burn that long. But a
figurative
fire could. The symbol is powerful enough—useful enough for all those who have ever lost a loved one, which is
everyone
—for the myth to be sustained. Perhaps even believed.”

“You’re saying I’m Cicero. Except in my case, instead of lighting eternal flames, I’m inventing evil spirits sending me on a wild goose chase.”

“That’s not the point. The point is you’re a
father
. What you’re experiencing, these feelings, they’re normal. Even the secret signs and omens are to be understood as normal.”

“Even if they’re not real.”

“And they’re not. They’re almost certainly not.”

“Almost. You said
almost
certainly not.”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s you.”

Out in the parking lot, the dozing cop awakens. His head rising, a hand adjusting the rearview mirror, to wipe the sleep from his eyes. But he doesn’t yet turn the keys in the ignition. Doesn’t step out of the car.

“There’s a problem with your analogy,” I say.

“Yes?”

“I’m not claiming I’ve found a lamp burning for hundreds of years. Everything I’ve seen, I’ve seen with my own eyes. And none of it, strictly speaking, is scientifically impossible.”

“Maybe not. I wouldn’t know. You haven’t
told
me what you’ve seen. But look where it’s led you. Driving across the country following clues left behind by—who? Tess? The Church? Devils? Angels? And to what purpose? To reclaim your daughter from the hands of death.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But it’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

“Something like that.”

“And I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m saying it’s
okay
. You’ve lectured about Orpheus and Eurydice, what, a dozen times? Two dozen? It makes sense that, in this time of distress, your brain would summon that old story and refashion it into your own.”

“I’m on a journey to the underworld. That it?”

“
I’m
not saying that.
You
are. To find the one closest to your heart. The age-old human yearning to step beyond the bounds of mortality.”

“Orpheus had a lyre that charmed Hades. What have I got? A head full of essays.”

“You’ve got knowledge. You know the territory. Even if that territory is completely made-up.”

“You’re smart, O’Brien.”

“Then you’ll come back to New York?”

“I said you were smart. Didn’t say you were right.”

As I watch, the light inside the state trooper’s car goes on. It reveals enough of the interior details to show that I’m wrong. Though it is one of those big Crown Victorias the police use, it’s not one of theirs. And it’s not a trooper behind the wheel. It’s Barone. The Pursuer. Grinning at me in the rearview mirror.

“I’m gonna call you back,” I say, getting to my feet and dropping a fifty on the table as I go.

“David? What’s going on?”

“Orpheus has got to run.”

I hang up and head out the door to my car. But before I do, the waitress calls after me. An intended pleasantry that, in the Midwestern manner, comes out as a stern command.