Before the Devil Fell

by Neil Olson

  “I mistook his enthusiasm for strength,” replied Tom. “But it wasn’t in him. I should have guided him more wisely.”

  “Guided?” Will said. “You should have locked the book up. If you honestly believed in its power, you should have burned it.”

  “Really?” Tom asked, appearing genuinely curious. “Is that what you would have done? Burned a book? Knowledge isn’t for hiding, William. It’s there to be explored. Even expanded upon.”

  “All knowledge? The knowledge to summon demons?”

  “Well, we all have our demons,” said the old man quietly. Just a hint of a smile on his face. “I bet yours are more interesting than mine.”

  Will had to give his anger hard rein. However normal Tom seemed, his faculties were surely compromised. He likely had no memory or comprehension of what Abby and Will had suffered because of Johnny’s reckless act.

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” was all he said.

  Tom put up a placating hand.

  “I’m not making fun of you. I don’t know what you’ve been dealing with. I don’t keep up. Sam tells me things, but...” He shrugged.

  “I’m not asking you to feel sorry for me,” Will replied.

  “Of course not.”

  “I’m asking for your help in getting rid of something dangerous.”

  “And that’s what I’m getting at,” said the professor, finger raised for emphasis. “You say ‘dangerous.’ Well, all right, you’re the one to know. But I’m asking you to think about how much trouble we get ourselves into with our own ideas. Our preconceptions. Our fears.”

  I think I’ve heard this speech, thought Will.

  “To the Greeks,” Tom continued, “a daemon was an intercessor between men and gods. Perhaps a god itself. No evil connotation. Plato equated the term daemon with knowledge. Socrates had his own personal daemon who spoke wisdom to him and kept him from making errors. Didn’t control him, mind you. Didn’t tell him what to do. Just guided him.”

  “That’s metaphor,” Will said. “The unconscious speaking to the conscious.”

  “Well of course it is,” Tom agreed, sitting back again in the creaking chair and smiling. “Unless it isn’t.”

  “You believe there’s more to it?”

  “That’s it.” Tom shot a finger at him. “More to it, that’s all I’m asking you to consider. Do I believe in Zeus up on a mountaintop, white beard and lightning bolt in his hand? Sending messengers down among us mortals? No more than you do. No more than I think Saint Peter is waiting for me at the Pearly Gates. It’s the Christians that made daemons into demons. Devils. Something evil. You must have read this stuff if you teach it.”

  “Yes,” Will said, trying to keep his cool. “But I read it, and teach it, as myth.”

  “Well and good,” Tom fired back, heat coming into his face and words. “But now that myth has come and bitten you in the ass.”

  “Grandpa, stop,” said Sam, badly distressed by the exchange.

  “Now you’re thinking there might be something more going on,” the old man continued. “But where do you go for an explanation? Christian fantasy and propaganda. Instead of that older, purer understanding of the phenomenon. That’s what Johnny was after. That’s what every true seeker hopes to find. Contact with those messengers who used to bring us knowledge and comfort.”

  Will closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

  “You don’t understand. This isn’t something I’ve chosen. It’s imposed itself on me. And there is nothing comforting or enlightening about it. It’s dark and ugly.”

  “It’s a heavy load,” Tom replied, pity in his voice. “I have no doubt. But what you’re describing isn’t the thing itself. It’s your fear. It’s your resistance.”

  “Resistance to what?”

  “To whatever message the daemon is trying to deliver.”

  “It’s trying to give me a message?”

  “Could be,” Tom said, less certainly. “Only you know that.”

  “I assure you I know no such thing.”

  “Then you had better figure it out, young man.”

  Another deep breath was required. Will could continue this sparring, but to what purpose? The Tom Hall who lived in his mind, the wry, wise surrogate grandfather who would have talked him down off the ledge of this madness, did not exist. Perhaps he never had. The man before him was what remained, and this man was as deeply owned by seven families’ mysticism as any of them. The Price women. Samantha. Eddie, Jimmy, Molly, his mother. Even Will’s own voice of reason rang hollow to him.

  “If you two have finished,” said Sam urgently, “can we please get back to the book?”

  “The book.” Tom turned to her as if she had just appeared, his eyes fluttering slightly. He went back and forth between the younger people, seeking for an explanation, his face beginning to go slack. They were losing him. “The book is no good to you.”

  “Why not?” Will asked.

  “It’s no good to you without a name. You need the name.”

  Sam knelt down next to Tom’s chair, taking his hands in hers.

  “We think we know the name.”

  His blue eyes fixed on her with a wild intensity, magnified by the thick lenses.

  “You do?” he whispered.

  “We need the book, Grandpa. It’s very important. Please.”

  He nodded several times, a wobbly, jerky motion.

  “You know,” Tom mumbled, looking away from her now. Leaning away, even. “You know, I think I got rid of that old book after all. I think maybe I gave it to someone.”

  “No,” she said softly, shaking her head. Willing it not to be true.

  “I need to lie down,” he went on, his speech becoming as slack as his face. “This is too much for one day. Can you help me up the stairs, dear? And then, you and your boy should go.”

  * * *

  The drive over had been tense, but there had been hope mixed with it. Some anxious expectation that they were on the verge of a solution. Perhaps also on the verge of a new phase of their relationship. The silence between them now was only grim.

  “He’s lying,” said Will finally.

  “Don’t put it like that.”

  “How should I put it? He would never give a book like that away. He would never just lose track of it.”

  “He’s old and confused,” she said, biting off each word. Eyes fixed on the road. “And you were agitating him.”

  “I was agitating him?”

  “Yes,” Sam insisted. “Every time we go see someone, you pick a fight.”

  “Every time we see someone I get treated to a bucketful of condescending bullshit by people who are not living with what—”

  “You spent all of his energy arguing philosophy, instead of focusing on what you needed.”

  It was “you” now, he noted. Not “we.”

  “Damn it, Sam, it was...” He made himself stop and take another deep breath. They were not helping his anxiety, but they might just keep him from saying more stupid stuff. “I’m not trying to fight anyone. But what they know is as important as what they have. We still don’t completely understand this.”

  “And you never will. No one completely understands this stuff. That’s the nature of it. If we only had that book.”

  “What do we do?” he asked. Knowing it was foolish, but not knowing what else to say.

  “I’ll go back and look again,” she answered, halfheartedly. “On my own.”

  Will felt a gap opening, much wider than the two feet that separated them. She was withdrawing from him. Backing away. Whatever her professions of friendship, he had crossed a line. He had violated the space between her and the old man, which was still the most precious bond she possessed. Understandably so. But her sudden coolness grieved him more than he could express.

 
“I’m sorry,” he said.

  “What for?”

  What indeed? For being himself? Or for everything that had happened, and was about to happen.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  He sat in the crowded room, drinking watery beer and watching the dream die. Again. Muriel and Saul, seated on either side of him, were as quiet as Will, but the tavern’s other patrons were not taking the matter calmly.

  “What the hell are they doing?”

  “Jesus, Grady, get him out of there.”

  On the television over the long wood bar, Pedro Martinez looked tired. He had gone seven strong innings, spoiled only by two solo homers by Giambi, and the Red Sox entered the bottom of the eighth up five runs to two over the Yankees. Game seven of the American League Championship. World Series berth on the line. But Pedro had thrown more than a hundred pitches, and it was time to turn the game over to Boston’s superb bull pen. The announcers knew it. Everyone in the bar knew it. Everyone in New England, not to mention retirees in Florida and transplanted Bostonians all over the country and world, glued to their television screens, knew it was time to pull Pedro. The only person who did not seem to know was Grady Little, the Red Sox manager.

  A double by the hated Jeter. Howls of protest in the bar. A single by Bernie Williams. Little bounced out of the dugout and headed for the pitcher’s mound.

  “Thank God,” said Tony Pascarelli.

  Tony had been the only one to greet him when Will and Muriel entered Murphy’s. Muriel said he needed to get out, and demanded he join her to see the Sox victory in some public place. Will reluctantly agreed, but regretted it the moment they entered the crowded tavern. Faces turned away from his gaze. Did they fear a hex? Will didn’t even recognize most of them, but they knew him, apparently. Saul Markowitz joined them at their table against the wall, probably out of pity. The favorable progress of the game distracted everyone, until the ill-omened eighth inning. Grady left the mound with Pedro still on it, and the momentary relief of the bar patrons turned to dismay.

  “What is he doing?”

  “He’s got to bring in Embree to face Matsui. Got to.”

  But he did not, and Pedro gave up a double to the dangerous Japanese batter, bringing Jeter and Williams home. Posada’s single tied the game. Will looked over at Saul, who only shrugged.

  “A curse is a curse,” he muttered.

  Couldn’t have said it better, thought Will.

  The faultless Mariano Rivera stifled the Sox batters and the game went to extra innings. The atmosphere in the bar turned hostile. Will could smell anger on the men and women around him. The way Sam claimed to smell it on him. A hot, rancid scent.

  “Let’s go,” said Muriel abruptly. Not waiting for a reply, she stood and headed for the door. Will hesitated. You didn’t leave a tie game between the Sox and Yankees—it was disloyal. Yet he felt more allegiance to Mure than to the Red Sox. He dropped twenty bucks on the table, nodded to Saul and got up. A few hard looks followed him to the door. Traitor.

  On the car radio, they listened to Aaron Boone hit the game-winning home run. Listened to the crowd at Yankee Stadium celebrate wildly. Another chapter in the book of Red Sox futility. Muriel jabbed the off button.

  “Wasn’t their year,” she said. With the equanimity of someone inoculated against disappointment by a lifetime’s exposure.

  “It’s never their year,” said Will. “You thought they were going to turn on me, didn’t you? The gang at Murphy’s. That’s why you got me out of there.”

  Early in the game, Will thought he saw Eddie Price enter the bar and leave again, but he couldn’t be certain. The day before he thought he saw Jane and Alice Hall walking hand in hand down the street, so he did not trust what his eyes reported. The line is getting thin. Between you and them. Between here and there. Despite her warnings and her guilt, Sam had not been in touch for two days. He didn’t know if she was trying to find the book or trying to forget he existed. He didn’t know which was better. Muriel did not answer his question.

  “So this thing with Samantha has run its course?” she said instead.

  It was not reasonable to think that there was a conspiracy to provoke him. It had to be coming from him. And it was like Muriel to be blunt.

  “We’re friends,” he replied. “I hope that’s not something that runs its course.”

  Muriel shrugged, simultaneously lighting a cigarette and rolling down the window.

  “Depends,” she said casually. “Hard to be friends with a crazy woman.” Then a mad cackle that was uncharacteristic. “I should know.”

  “You think she’s nuts?”

  “She’s a strange girl. You don’t need me to tell you.”

  “You’re not friends with Sam,” he said, zipping up his jacket against the chill invading the car. But it was better than choking on her cigarette. “I thought you might be talking about my mother.”

  “I was making a little joke about myself, actually. I never called Abby crazy.”

  “What happened that day,” he asked suddenly.

  “Can’t let it go, can you?” she sighed. “Your mom is the only person who can help with that. I was out in the car. I wasn’t even in the house when the lightning hit.”

  They were at cross-purposes, but maybe this was the way. By misunderstanding his questions, she was giving him more interesting answers. Could he perfect the technique and apply it to others?

  “You meant the day Abby fell down the stairs, didn’t you?” Muriel said, catching on.

  “Yeah, but you can answer either one.”

  “What a lousy choice. She was just having a bad day. It was like she never woke up from the dream. She was talking to me, but she was seeing whatever was in her head. And then she gave me this look. This, this terrible look, like...”

  In the blue light of the dashboard gauges, he could see pain in Muriel’s eyes.

  “Like you were evil,” said Will. Knowing it was so, but not understanding how he knew.

  “Yeah,” she answered. “Like that. Then she was out the door.”

  “Poor Mure,”he said. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been looked at like that since I’ve come back here.”

  “You must like it,” she grumbled. “You won’t leave.”

  “Why were you out in the car that night?”

  “Oh man, you’re going to squeeze it all out of me, aren’t you?” She was trying to locate her usual sarcastic tone, but her voice jumped with anxiety and grief. “We were going to get you out,” she said, so fast he almost didn’t catch it.

  “Get me out? Who was?”

  “It wasn’t safe for you in that house. They were going to involve you in the ceremony. They were going to use you. We had to get you away from here, but it didn’t work.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” The car was losing speed and her pale face had a frozen look. Will thought suddenly of Molly Jordan. “Pull over,” he said quickly.

  But she was already doing it. Before they had completely stopped, she had popped her door opened and leaned out to retch. The chill that spread through Will’s body had nothing to do with the cold air rushing in. Logic should have told him that if she was there for the aftermath—as he remembered—she would have been under the oath. But this was Muriel. The woman who didn’t believe in any of that nonsense. If she was subject to such control, against her will and even her belief, then what else might be true?

  She sat up. The fear gone from her face, looking more embarrassed than anything.

  “Shouldn’t have eaten those nachos. Friggin’ Saul, he knows I can’t say no. Could you get me a tissue, hon? In the glove compartment.”

  He handed her the packet and she wiped her mouth. Then closed the door and put the car back in gear. She didn’t speak again for another minute or so.

  “You’re trying t
oo hard,” said Muriel.

  “Am I?”

  “Yes,” she confirmed. “Half this stuff you think you need to figure out, you don’t. You know all you need to. You just can’t see it. Because you’re missing one piece of information.”

  “Okay,” he exhaled. “And that is?”

  “Ask Abby about your father.”

  “My father?” It was the last thing he expected. “What does he have to do with this?”

  “It’s connected, trust me. But I can’t tell you. It has to come from your mother—it’s only right. She should have told you a long time ago.”

  Even as he considered just how resolute her refusal was, if there might not be a way to move her, something bothered him. And then he had it. “Your father” she had said. Not “Joe,” which was the only way she ever referred to the man.

  “Get your answer and then get out of here,” she continued. “I’ll drive you to New York if I have to. If you won’t do it because of the danger to yourself, do it for the pain you’re causing everyone else.”

  They had swung around the bend and were passing Sam’s house when he saw the police cruiser parked along the roadside.

  “Stop,” Will commanded. “Right here, stop.”

  She complied, with a huff of annoyance. Will looked hard at the police car, but it was empty.

  “What?” Muriel demanded.

  “This idiot has been following me around since I got here.”

  “Who?”

  “Jimmy Duffy. This must be his cruiser, the door is even dinged where he...never mind.”

  Her cell rang before they could say any more. Muriel listened a moment.

  “Yeah, he’s with me,” she said into the phone. “No, we’re right down the street, what’s up? Yeah, sure. Call me back when you can.” She slapped the phone closed and put the care in reverse. “Your mom.”

  “And?”

  “There’s something going on at the house. Jimmy is there and she doesn’t want you anywhere near—Will!”

  He opened the door and stepped out before she could hit the gas. He half expected her to get out and chase him, but he didn’t look back. In a few seconds he was running. That sonofabitch, harassing his mother now. He would break his other arm.