The Demonologia Biblica

by Wilde, Barbie

  Molly flopped heavily into the electric wheelchair. She was more tired in body than she cared to let show, but her mind was water on a hot plate, skittering across every corner at once. “Beth was busy teasing that cat just an hour ago,” she said.

  “I know. We had to put it out when her monitors went off.”

  “So she came down to annoy Robbie.”

  “I know that as well. Heaven knows how that animal got in after hours. I must have words with the Manager. There is pet therapy and there’s a bloody nuisance. But Hilda seemed to want the company, so...” She raised her shoulders, hands spread at an unanswerable question.

  “Chomi was here on Sunday night when Carol went,” Molly said. “Is it me or does that animal somehow seem to know when people are...you know...”

  “They do say animals sense these things. Don’t go saying that too loudly though, or we’ll have patients keeling over every time they see that creature walk past their room.”

  Molly was never sure what was gallows humour, and what wasn’t, with Beth. The woman seemed genuinely upset, so she nodded and said nothing. Beth Cho was a constant in this small world of changing faces and there was no call to upset her. “I don’t know where Chomi went,” she said. “Better keep an eye on Robbie though. That cat probably thinks he’s her next snack.”

  Molly went to bed, submitting meekly to the tags and monitors she worked so hard to avoid in waking hours. Hilda’s death had shocked her. True, she was – had been – an old woman, Molly thought, but she was here for respite, like me. Molly hated the idea that maybe the old woman had decided it was time. It went against every instinct she’d had. But life was never so simple. Sometimes people got tired, very tired, she thought, and slipped quickly into sleep.

  Something pressed down on her, squeezing the air from fragile lungs - and there was a sweetness to it. Pain was receding and calm ran through her that she hadn’t known for a long while.

  Molly told herself to open her eyes. This had to be it, she thought, the out of body thing that Will had been going on about.

  The idea of seeing her own body from somewhere up amongst the light fittings wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted to live, and a part of her consciousness screamed at herself not to accept this. But an unfamiliar euphoria had crept across her that made it seem worthwhile.

  A tingling that was sensuous- exciting. Something breathing close to her face. She could feel moisture on her lips; not breath, but a kiss. She could feel at last and she felt good. A gentle urgency raising her nerve endings out of their drug-cushioned fog. Rumbling, like a small engine, so close the vibrations shivered through her neck and shoulders.

  Molly’s eyes flickered open. She gained a glimpse of half closed eyes staring back in that deep well of sound; coppery eyes in a sharp, midnight face.

  The mist closed over her once more. High-pitched whining had joined the chorus that meant something. Something important she could not identify. Friction, still, against her lips, faster now, and close to harsh. Raised voices infiltrated her re-discovered euphoria and she wanted them to go away. They were telling her to fight back; pulling her from the warm comfort she was offered. Molly parted her lips and strained forward...and found nothing.

  The pressure to chest and lips had ceased abruptly and Beth Cho was there, rubbing her hands and arms, and calling her name.

  Molly clawed briefly at the air line under her nose as consciousness flooded her lobes. A few breaths, as deep as her rattling lungs would allow, and she was back.

  “Molly. Can you understand me? Molly. Wake up. Come on. Molly.” Beth was massaging Molly’s hands almost to the point of pain in an effort at waking her patient.

  The girl clasped the digits into stillness, and whispered, “What happened?”

  “Your monitors kicked off. You’re stabilised now. Are you in pain?”

  “No pain. Well, no more than usual. It was a dream. I was dreaming so clearly.”

  “Ah. The nightmares.”

  “No. It was a good dream. Peaceful. I didn’t want to wake up, but there was a noise ... and something on my face...”

  Beth looked back through the open doorway.

  It was the minutest of gestures but Molly had grown adept at reading things people didn’t say around her. Those things people always assumed she wasn’t ready to know. Moving her head a little she peered around the nurse. The only thing to see was Chomi sitting in the centre of the corridor, washing her oversized ears with that casual feline nonchalance. So at home, even though she didn’t actually live here.

  “Well you did say people keeled over. But not me. Not yet.” Molly managed a small laugh. “Cat, nil – me, one.”

  “Don’t tempt fate. I called security to have it removed earlier, but they couldn’t find it.”

  “Well she’s here now. Have you tried calling the RSPCA?”

  “They wouldn’t come out. They didn’t have an officer to spare.” Beth crinkled her mouth, looking all around her in short jabbing tilts of her head, obviously nervous.

  “They wouldn’t find a demon. It’s a devil cat, that one. Chordew...” She cut off sharply, a faint, fleeting flush tinting her cheeks. “Don’t listen to me. Spouting superstitions from my grandmother’s knee. Forget it.”

  She smoothed Molly’s arm. “No point offering you something to help you sleep? Didn’t think so. I shall check back on you in a little while.” She straightened the covers and hurried away leaving Molly with more questions than ever.

  Chomi was still out there, right in middle of the corridor, washing those satellite-dish ears. Nobody knew where Chomi came from, though being so sleek and glossy she was quite obviously no street urchin. But a demon? Chomi paused her ablutions to return Molly’s stare with cool, copper-coloured eyes, and then slipped somehow from view without appearing to move.

  Molly smiled at the naivety in Beth’s hints. A demon? Ridiculous. More than a little mad. Yet…She waited to be sure Beth was not lingering close by before reaching for her iPad. She searched for cats that might fit the bill, starting with ‘Black Abyssinians’ that, she learned, did not come in black. They were a darkish grey. The truly black Bombay Cat was a modern cross-breed. Interesting, but not helpful. She Googled cat gods and demons and got the usual suspects: Mafdet, Mau, Bast, Kasha, Shasti. There was quite a list but none fitted, at least not according to the websites she found.

  Molly put the pad on sleep and lay back, wondering what else she could ask.

  The bed juddered and Chomi was standing on the quilt, gazing intently at her, and vibrated a rusty greeting. In that instant Molly was afraid. Hard not to be when Beth, and now she, had the animal down as a creature of ill omen.

  Chomi regarded her in silence and then crouched to knead at Molly’s dressing gown strewn across the end of the bed. The cat’s eyes narrowed and she began to purr. It was the sound of any normal cat and Molly had to smile. There are few sounds harder to resist than a cat’s purr.

  She reached forward to touch the creature’s head. Their gazes connected again. The purr changed gear, becoming a low grumble, close to, but not quite, the fractured growl of a Siamese, but deeper and less feline, like no other cry Molly had ever heard.

  It wavered on, a continuous, sinuous, susurration – insistent as the wailing of a siren, yet calming, mesmerising, as sirens were not. It grated in Molly’s senses, yet somehow soothed her toward sleep.

  A trolley loaded with breakfast crockery, heralding approaching dawn and the day shift, rattled out along the corridor. Its clatter broke the moment. Shattering the spell, Molly thought. She snatched her hand back in the moment that Chomi turned her alien head toward the noise.

  Molly kicked out hard beneath the quilt, launching the cat into clear air. It landed near the door, crouched low, head outstretched, eyes a shade of deeper flame.

  For a moment Molly thought it would leap back to her, and then the trolley jangled once more, closer this time, paces from the open door. With a parting glottal spit the cat disappeare
d, so fast Molly had no idea which direction it had taken, but was monumentally relieved it had gone. Beth’s demon-cats were suddenly far less bizarre.

  Molly went back to Googling on her iPad.

  ***

  After a slow search of the whole floor, peering in to each patient, family and staff room in turn, Molly retreated to the Residents’ Lounge. “You did see it?” she asked Will. “Last night. Did you see anything?”

  “Chomi? Yes.”

  “Where? When?”

  “In the corridor. When you were shouting.”

  “I was shouting?”

  He grinned. “My room is opposite. Believe me, you were screaming.”

  “But you saw the cat.”

  Will nodded. “For a few seconds, and then it just vanished. Poof!” He pinched and splayed his fingers to demonstrate. “Took off so fast.”

  “Which way?”

  Will stared at her for a moment. “’Which way’ what?”

  “How did it vanish? Star Trek or Cheshire Cat style?”

  He picked at his lower lip for a moment and shook his head. “Neither. It vanished, as in: it wasn’t there any-more.”

  “So, supernatural fast,” she stated. “I thought I’d imagined it.”

  Clattering in the doorway made them pause: a cleaner with her trolley. An Asian woman of indeterminate age; pretty with her high-cheeked, features and a permanent half smile that Molly would have placed more readily on some temple Goddess than a domestic.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs C,” Will said. “Lovely day.”

  The woman smiled, before darting off to clear the single discarded newspaper littering a table.

  “She’s late,” Molly murmured, embarrassed at her jitters.

  “She often is. She’s got three jobs you know.”

  Molly watched the woman trot around the room, dusting and tidying and rubbing vigorously at spotless table tops. Her Nan had been a cleaner and she could appreciate the work that people never saw and took for granted. But still, Molly thought. I’m sure she’s already been in here today.

  “This cat,” she said to Will, “did you actually see it sitting on my bed? Before I shouted out. I think...” She looked away for a moment. “I don’t expect you to believe me, but I think this is a Chordewa. A devil cat.”

  “A what?”

  Molly handed over her iPad, pointing at the page blooming into view.

  “Chordewa,” he read. “Demon whose soul leaves her body in the guise of a black cat. Yeah, right. Course it is.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t believe me. But when it was sitting on my chest...and taking me away...”

  “A cat stealing your breath.”

  “Not quite, but close.” Molly poured tea into the mugs. The simple act was another convenient distraction. What she was saying was nonsense on the surface. Her other Nan, not the cleaning one, always claimed cats stole your breath in your sleep. “You don’t believe me?” she asked.

  “I do, as it happens.” Will picked at the loose threads on his blanket as the silence ticked between them. “It’s not a real animal. We need to destroy it before takes another soul.”

  “Now you’re sounding like a vicar.”

  Will tapped his chest. “Card-carrying altar boy. Does that count?”

  Molly grinned and looked back at the iPad. “I can’t find much on it, though. Every site seems to quote the same sources. Chordewa is a demon who seeks out the sick and dying.”

  “A cat could hardly eat a whole person.”

  “Doesn’t eat the flesh. Listen to this: Chordewa kills by licking the victim’s lips and inhaling their soul.” She shuddered. “Not only stops you returning to the collective conscious. It leaves nothing of you to return in another form. You’re gone – like that!” she clapped her hands an inch from Will’s nose.

  “Okay. So we kill it.”

  “We can try, but there are two big problems. One...” She gestured at their wasted bodies. “Cats are fast, and we really aren’t. And two...” She measured off two fingers. “The cats are only the avatar that a Chordewa sends out to feed, while it sleeps. Meaning it’s probably somewhere in this building, somewhere guarded by its magic. So...if we catch the cat, it says here the Chordewa is doomed to sleep until it fades to nothing.”

  “Wouldn’t we still be better off killing the little bastard?”

  “I don’t think we can.” She covered Will’s hand with her own. “It can’t leave when the exits are locked. And why would it? For a demon who preys on the dying this place is fucking perfect.”

  “Regular smorgasbord,” Will said. “Why don’t we tell someone? Father George will be in at the weekend and...”

  “Ha! If you hadn’t seen what you’ve seen, would you be listening to me right now? Plus that’s three days away. Can we afford to wait that long?”

  “Point taken.”

  “So we find the cat and we trap it.”

  Will sighed, leaning his head back to stare up at the cream-coloured ceiling blinds shielding them from sun. He said nothing for a few moments.

  Bird song came muffled on a waft of garden-scented wind; the softness mixing with harsher clouds of spray polish, and the staccato crackles of Mrs C’s plastic apron. Even Robbie made no noises louder than the scrunching of peanut shells.

  Molly looked up to see what fascinated Will. There was nothing there but a few dead flies. Trapped between canvas and glass, their grotesque outlines were of bodies and wings, with their legs folded neatly inwards, like tiny cadavers laid out on a vast hammock; struck down without warning. Or perhaps, she thought, I just see that because I’m here.

  “I’m with you so far as it goes but I can’t do much.” Will gestured a bony hand down the length of his torso and legs, emaciated beneath their blanket-wrap. “I can’t sit up on my own, never mind chase supernatural cats. I’m really good at lying around the place, if that counts.” He glanced back toward the corridor, and leaned as close as he was able, lowering his voice to a mere zephyr. “That’s basically all you need from bait.”

  Sound ceased for that moment, not even the swish of Mrs C’s apron, as Molly digested that snippet. “I don’t know. That could be the most dangerous part.”

  “Oh. Yeah. And I’ve got such a lot to lose? Come on, Mol. You brought all this up. We have to give it at least one try.”

  She looked around her. As always the room was deserted, with no one to watch over their plotting but a potty-mouthed parrot. “Okay. Tonight then. Just don’t take any of their bloody knockout pills. You need to be awake!”

  ***

  Molly came slowly into consciousness, aware it was late. She raised the bed to slide off more easily and grabbed crutches in favour of the wheelchair. The night-time lull had already set in. A few TVs played softly in various rooms; low conversation drifted from the staff room behind Reception; Robbie muttered to himself in the darkened conservatory.

  The hallway’s bluish night-lighting was split by the work of one small table lamp and the flickering TV-glow dancing lazily from Will’s open door.

  Chomi was on his chest, her head stretched forward to lap delicately at Will’s pale, dry lips, her dark tongue dipping in and out of a smoky-blue haze flowing steadily from his mouth to hers.

  Molly lifted a crutch and hurled it, javelin-style. Accurate, from a hundred stick-heaving contests, the rubber ferule caught the beast on its head and knocked it over the far edge. She felt rather than heard the thud and clatter of the crutch hitting the wall. She lurched forward, yelling for Beth, competing with the monitor now screeching from the bedside.

  She fell toward him, intending to check vital signs. Will was pale, his eyes squeezed tightly shut against the world and then flickered open. Molly felt a slight relief.

  Then she was gently, firmly, removed, and someone was handing her the spent crutch-missile. She caught a momentary glimpse of a black shape, flowing around the corner of the door and out of sight at speed.

  “Chomi,” Molly said. “The cat. It was
on the bed and...”

  “A cat? Is that all? Well don’t worry about it now. We’ll deal with it.” She was an agency nurse, not one of usual night staff and unaware, she turned her back on Molly, and hurried back to help Beth in attending Will.

  The electronic screech was staunched abruptly and Molly hurried to peer around the door. She could see the signs on the screen were thankfully stable and moving with a regular rhythm. Low voices, calm tones. She glanced along the passage in both directions. She knew the animal would still be in here - somewhere.

  She began a fresh search, starting at the reception desk and working her way along every room with an open door. Nothing she had seen so far led her to believe her adversary walked through closed doors or walls.

  From the darkened end room the squawk and mutter of a sleepy parrot drifted into her thoughts. She lurched through the doors, flicked one set of lights on and searched under every chair and table. As with all the other rooms there was nothing out of the norm. Chomi had apparently vanished.

  Molly didn’t want to sleep. Nor did she want to listen to the hushed tones of nursing staff keeping her friend alive, just metres from her own bed. She had told Will about the Chordewa and he insisted on being the tethered goat, leaving his door open to invite it in. He had argued that his condition made him a prime candidate, and he’d obviously been right. She should never have let him. And then to fall asleep, to leave him vulnerable - that was unforgivable. She picked up the TV remote and flopped into an arm chair.

  Molly didn’t want to sleep. The cat had found her once and its wheedling, insidious mesmer scared her more than she could say. The websites she had spent hours Googling had told her little beyond how the demon seeks out the sick and dying. It had come to her first, before the cancer-raddled Will. Did that mean she was closer to her end than she had been told?

  Molly didn’t want to sleep.

  ***

  “Bastard. Fetch the cart. Bastard. Shut up Robbie. Fetch the cart.”

  Molly woke with a pounding headache and a pressure in her left arm. Prising her lids open was an effort. So much harder than usual, though she knew for sure she had not succumbed to the little red sleeping pills Beth was constantly trying to push at her.